Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2005, Side 190

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Ragnar Ingi Aðalsteinsson
SUMMARY
‘On the Distribution of Word Classes in Alliteration’
Keywords: Alliteration, Eddic poetry, skaldic poetry
Scholars seem to agree that words in sentences differ in strength. This difference in
word strength becomes very clear in metric poetry. Jón Helgason (1959) argues that
alliteration in younger poetry has changed from what it was in the earliest poetry, thus
in later poetry (from the 16th, 17th and 18th century) alliteration is more often on
weaker words than in poetry from earlier centuries. Helgason points out that in the
earliest poetry nouns and adjectives in the first ictus in a line had to alliterate, but in
younger poetry this rule is no longer valid. Helgason believes that later poets have lost
some of the sensitivity that the older poets mastered in connection with alliteration
and probably do not notice what earlier would have been looked upon as metrical
flaws. The aim of the present study is to investigate whether Helgason’s theory is cor-
rect, i.e. whether alliteration changes in Icelandic poetry had occurred with respect to
the categories of words in alliteration. Poetry from before 1400 was compared to poet-
ry from the 16th, 17th and 18th century. Results showed changes in the distribution
of word categories in alliteration. These are the main changes: In fornyrðislag
substantial changes have occurred; pronouns occur much more often in alliteration in
later poetry than in older poetry, the same applies to prepositions and conjunctions.
Nouns are used less often in alliteration in later poetry than in older poetry, but adjec-
tives are more common in later verse than in older poetry. Numerals are less used for
alliteration in later poetry than older verse. Rímur poetry has changed much less. Fi-
nite verbs are used less often for alliteration in later poetry than in older poetry; the
same applies to prepositions, and nominal forms of verbs are used somewhat less
often in later poetry than in older verse. In addition to the comparison of older and
later poetry, mean number of word categories carrying alliteration was inspected,
both in Eddic poetry and in dróttkvœtt poetry. This revealed that in dróttkvœtt nouns,
adjectives and pronouns are relatively much more common in alliteration than in
Eddic poetry. The same applies to nominal forms of verbs. Numerals and adverbs of
time, on the other hand, are used statistically significantly less often for alliteration in
dróttkvœtt than in Eddic poetry.
Ragnar Ingi Aðalsteinsson
Kennaraháskóla íslands
Stakkahlíð
IS-105 Reykjavik, ÍSLAND
ria@khi.is