Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1992, Page 105

Phonological Variation in 20th Century lcelandic
Preservations:
g The “correct” (as opposed to the “confused”) pronunciation
of non-high front vowels.
h The preservation of the fricatives [v,y] before [ð]
Unclear case:
i The [gl] pronunciation of/ngl/ sequences.8
We will now try to determine whether these features are gaining, losing
°r holding their ground, as it were. For that purpose it is useful to com-
Pare the results of BG and RÍN, since about 40 years passed between
the two studies.
As explained in Section 2.1 above, the “scoring methods” ofBG and
RÍN are somewhat different. Since BG’s scores cannot be converted
into RÍN scores we have attempted to do it the other way around. Then
lhe question arises whether a single “slip of the tongue would have
caused BG to say that a particular subject had “mixed” pronunciation
e-g. if (s)he had [xv] pronunciation in 15 instances out of 16 and
[khv] pronunciation once (cf. also Pálmason 1983:35, n.7).9 There is
8 It is very likely that the /ngl/-forms that preserve the stop are “original” m
historical sense. There is also morphophonemic altemation in the modem lan-
guage between /ngV/-forms that preserve the stop and /ngl/-forms, cf. the relation
between engill ‘angel’ (sg.) and englar ‘angels’ (pl.), ungur ‘young and ungling-
Ur teenager, youngster’, where the /g/ is preserved before the vowel in every-
h°dy’s speech. But the deletion of the stop in the /ngl/-environment is of course
luite natural as a phonological mle and it may very well be that the (surface)
Prcservation of the stop in this environment is an innovation in the modem lan-
guage.
We have good reason to believe that judgments passed by BG and his collabo-
rutors were usually quite strict, although the practice seems to have varied somewhat
depending on the variable under consideration. Thus Ólafur M. Ólafsson informed us
in a personal interview that judgments conceming the “confused” pronunciation were
quite strict such that as soon as clear signs were heard of the lowering of /i,u/, for
'ristance, the person was judged as having the “confused pronunciation ( flámæli ),
even if no “confused” examples were observed for some of the vowels in question.
^he “mixed” category with respect to this variable (referred to as “slappmæli sloppy
sPeech’ in BG’s studies) was only used when the the quality of the relevant vowels was