Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2008, Page 134

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Alexander Andrason
fonn of the hafa-perfect in (14) can be compared to the inflected par-
ticipial fonns of the passive in (13):
(13)a. Maðurinn var rekinn.
the-man(m.sg.) was fired(m.sg.)
b. Starfsfólkið var rekið.
the-staff(n.sg.) was fíred(n.sg.)
c. Konumar vom reknar.
the-women(f.pk) were fired(f.pk)
(14)a. Forstjórinn hefur rekið konuna.
the-boss(m.sg.) has fired(n.sg.) the-woman(f.sg.)
b. Forstjóramir hafa rekið konumar.
the-bosses(m.pk) have fíred(n.sg.) the-women(f.pk)
In the vera búin(n) að construction in SI, the masculine and feminine
forms are pronounced the same way, i.e. as [pu:in] or, in less careful
speech as [pu:n]. In colloquial SI the vowel a [a] from the infmitive
marker að is often agglutinated to the form búin(n), giving rise to the
pronunciation [pu:na] for búin(n) að. While this is an optional collo-
quial form in SI, it has been reanalyzed into an indeclinable mono-
moiphemic particle búna in PI.17
In consequence, one can observe a clear example of the decatego-
rialization and fusion in PI, whereby the sequence [verb + adjective +
infmitive marker] has become a single indivisible mono-morphemic
17 Although the colloquial reduction to [pu:na] in SI is presumably most common
for the masculine and feminine singular forms búin(n) að, the plural forms búnir að
(m.pl.) and búnar að (f.pl.) can also be reduced in a similar fashion. Then sequences
like Þeir eru búnir að koma ‘They(m.ph) have come’ and Þœr eru búnar að koma
‘They(f.ph) have come’ could be informally rendered as respectively Þeir eru búna
koma and Þœr eru búna koma, although búnra [punra] for búnir/búnar að is proba-
bly a more common reduction form here. But even though such pronunciation forms
exist, they are not accepted in the written standard. More importantly, it is never pos-
sible in SI to reduce neuter forms like búið að to búna as in PI. In SI the reduced form
for búið að would be búða [pu:ða]. Thus the gender differentiation between mascu-
line and feminine on the one hand and neuter on the other is preserved in the reduced
forms in SI. This is not the case in PI BÚNA-construction.