Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2004, Side 164

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Haraldur Bernharðsson
RITASKRÁ
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SUMMARY
‘Do You Watch Skjá einan [‘Screen One’]?’
Keywords: numerals, names, inflection
This paper discusses the name of a recently established television station in lceland,
Skjár einn (‘Screen One’), and the different treatment of that name by speakers of
Modem Icelandic. In acc. sing. (masc.), the name is either Skjár einn or Skjá einan,
and the question is: What is einn in the name Skjár einn'I Is it the indefinite pronoun
einnl Is it the adjective einn'I Or is it the numeral einn'! The discussion in section 2
indicates that on various grounds (syntactic, phonological, and semantic) it is
impossible to analyze it as an indefinite pronoun or adjective. Semantically, it seems
most straightforward to regard it as a numeral, and this is supported, among other
things, by the fact that for a time there existed a sister station named Skjár tveir
(‘Screen Two’), as discussed in section 3. Yet, for syntactic reasons, such an analysis
faces considerable difficulties: in this position, we would not expect an inflected mas-
culine form of the numerals einn and tveir, but rather an uninflected neuter form,
Skjár eitt/tvö (nom.), Skjá eitt/tvö (acc.), Skjá eitt/tvö (dat.), Skjás eitt/tvö (gen.).
Evidently, some speakers of Modern Icelandic feel the need to change the names