Íslenzk tunga - 01.01.1961, Qupperneq 80

78
HREINN BENEDIKTSSON
centre of the North (in some parts of Eyjajjörður) instead of the
usual -a, e. g. kasli for kasta; and the occasional loss, in the South-
West, of the nom. pl. -r before the definite article, e. g. konunar for
konurnar ‘the women’.
IV
The most important dialectological research that has been done in
Iceland is in the field of pronunciation or phonetics. This is con-
cordant with the well-known dialectological principle that isophones,
as a rule, form clearer boundaries than do word and meaning dif-
ferences, isolexes and isosemes.17 This, again, is natural in view of
ihe functional difference between the units involved, the purely
distinctive or contrastive function of phonetic units as opposed to the
signifying function of the grammatical units: The former have, so to
speak, one side only, whereas the latter are double-faced, having both
form and meaning (cf. de Saussure’s ‘signifiant’ vs. ‘signifié’).
Some remarks on questions of this kind were made by earlier
scholars, especially by Árni Magnússon,18 and Eggert Ólafsson, the
naturalist, in the middle of the eighteenth century.19 But systematic
research may be said not to have begun until early in the present
century, with Jón Ofeigsson’s survey prefaced to Blöndal’s Dic-
tionary.20 Next, in the late twenties and early thirties, Stefán Einars-
son undertook important investigations of dialect differences, also
for the most part limited to questions of phonetics.21
17 On this, see, most recently, E. Stankiewicz, “On Discreteness and Continui-
ty in Structural Dialectology,” Word XIII (1957), pp. 45f.
18 See the reference in footnote 7.
19 See Á. Böðvarsson, “Þáttur um málfræðistörf Eggerts Ólafssonar,” Skírn-
ir CXXV (1951), pp. 156—172.
20“Træk af moderne islandsk Lydlære. VII. Oversigt over de vigtigste is-
landske Dialekter i fonetisk Ilenseende,” S. Blöndal, Islandsk-dansk Ordbog,
pp. xxvif.
21 Einarsson’s most important articles from this period are: “On Some Points
of Icelandic Dialectal Pronimciation,” Ar.la l‘hilologica Scandinavica III (1928),
pp. 264—279; “Icelandic Dialect Studies. I. Austfirðir,” The Journal oj English