Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1992, Page 103

Phonological Variation in 20th Century Icelandic 101
generations and thus give an idea of in what direction the changes are
going.
The majority dialect
is useful at this point to determine what the “majority dialect”
ls like. We will sometimes refer to it below as the Reykjavík dialect
although it is not by any means restricted to Reykjavík. It should also
P°inted out that Reykjavík is not a very uniform dialect area, being
a tnelting pot of sorts and by far the largest town in Iceland. But if one
tttns into people who live in Reykjavík and have not just moved there
from somewhere else, it is most likely that they will speak like this
(oompare the list in (3) above):
(5) a They have unaspirated rather than aspirated /p,t,k/ after long
vowels.
b They have the voiceless rather than the voiced pronunciation
of /l,m,n/ before /p,t,k/.
c They pronounce /zv-words with initial [khv] rather than [xv]
for instance.
d They do not have long monophthongs before /gi/ ([ji]).
e They diphthongize /a,ö,e,i/ before /ng,nk/.6
f They insert a [t] into /m,rl/ clusters.
g They will have the “correct” rather than the “confused” pro-
nunciation of non-high front vowels.
h They do not tum their /v,y/ into stops before /ð/.
i They leave out the /g/ in /ngl/-clusters.
Tk
e dialectal features (variables) in (5a-i) were investigated by BG,
^Th* ------------
there 1S Stalemenl is not entirely uncontroversial. It implies among other things that
Peo 1 n° mstances °f the monophthong [1] before /ng,nk/ in the speech of these
jn t^e' ^here one might expect it we get the high front vowel [i] instead. The statement
°f rT? teXt W0Uld 1x1 accurate if we would in fact get the diphthong [ii] (or [ii]) instead
vow ,ln tllese contcxts. Now some phonologists have analyzed the Icelandic high front
n°t do ^ aS 3 d‘Plltf|0n8 (e-g- Haugen 1958, cf. the discussion in Games 1976). We did
text • S° ln our dcscription of the Icelandic vowel system. Hence the statement in the
ls not entirely accurate.