Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1992, Síða 109

Phonological Variation in 20th Century lcelandic
107
Two comments are in order here. First, although it is not entirely
clear from Tahle 4 that the “soft” pronunciation of /p,t,k/ is gaining
Sround in Skagafjörður, with the BG generation actually using the
hard pronunciation slightly more now than in the 1940s, the tendency
becomes somewhat clearer when one compares the indices for all the
different age groups in Skagafjörður in the 1980s, as done in (9) (cf.
^ráinsson & Ámason 1986:50 — note that the indices could range from
100 (= no instance of “hard” soft” pronunciation): pronunciation) to 200 (= no instance of
(9) Age group: Index for hard/soft pronunciation
1. 12-20 years 161
2. 21—45 161
3.46-55 168
4. 56-70 183
5. over 70 188
^s seen in (9), there is a clear correlation with age here and it is highly
significant (correlation 0.2835, p < 0.001), although the “softening”
Seems to have levelled off in the youngest age groups.
A second comment on Table 4 has to do with the [rjl] pronunciation.
Although the figures for “pure” [ijlJ pronunciation are considerably
ioWer in RÍN than in BG, the comparison is not entirely accurate
Slnce BG did not investigate this phenomenon in all school districts in
^hagafjörður whereas the RÍN figures are averages from the whole area.
Second, if we compare the indices for different age groups according
to we see no clear correlation with age which could give us a
C'Ue what the tendency in the present day language is like. This is
s °wn in (10) where the correlation of this dialectal feature with age
'S c°ntrasted with that of the fricative pronunciation of [v,y] before
' fcf- Þráinsson & Ámason 1986:56. Note that here 100 would mean
n° instance of [rjkl] pronunciation (or no instance of the stops [p,k]
e ore /ð/) and 200 would mean no instance of [ijl] (or no instance of
he fricatives [v,y] before /ð/)):