Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2003, Side 101

Umræðugreinar, athugasemdir og flugur
A Note on nokkurr
ANDREA DE LEEUW VAN WEENEN
0» Introduction
In his 1961-62 article “Óákv. forn. nokkur, nokkuð” Hreinn
Benediktsson gave a description of the development of the pronoun
nokkur/nokkuð from its origin to its present form, which was a great
improvement on the previous description in Noreen’s grammar
(1970).1 The latter is hardly more than a hotch-potch of all the forms
Noreen found in dictionaries, word lists and editions.
Hreinn Benediktsson derives the pronoun from a *ni-wait-hwarjaR
and *ni-wait-hwata respectively (not *ni-wait-ek-hwarjaR/*ni-wait-
ek-hwata), which he considers to be loan translations from Latin
nescio quis, nescio quid. The oldest forms are nekkverr and nekkvat.
All other forms listed by Noreen (1970) (nqkkverr, nakkvarr,
nakkverr, nekkvarr, n0kkvarr, nQkkvarr, nQkkvurr, iiQkkurr, nQkkurr,
nakkurr, nokkurr, nukkurr, nekkurr, nakkvat, nekkvet, nQkkvat) have
developed from these forms. Hreinn Benediktsson refutes the idea that
nakkvarr could derive from a pronoun hvarr, as that pronoun does not
exist in Icelandic. However, this argument does not seem to be very
strong, as one might argue that as nekkverr comes from hverr,
nakkvarr/nekkvarr comes from hvárr, and that when the second sylla-
(*le became unstressed, its vowel was shortened.
In order to describe the changes the pronoun has undergone, he
gives a survey of its forms at different stages: the oldest Icelandic
1 Editor’s note: A considerably revised and extended version of Hreinn
^enediktsson’s article is published in his collection of articles (2002). That version is
n°t considered in the present paper, but the revisions do not seem to affect the main
arguments made.
hlenskt mál 25 (2003), 99-109. © 2004 íslenska málfrceðifélagiS, Reykjavík.