Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2013, Page 187

i8. aldar orðabók og málsagan
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Valtýr Guðmundsson. 1922. Islandskgrammatik. H. Hagerups forlag, Kpbenhavn.
Æv: Sjá Jóhannes B. Sigtryggsson.
SUMMARY
‘An i8th-century dictionary and the history of the Icelandic language’
Keywords: Icelandic, language history, historical morphology, declension, substantives,
adjectives
This article demonstrates with examples that an i8th-century dictionary can be of use for
describing Icelandic language history. The dictionary in this case is Nucleus latinitaris, a
Latin-Icelandic dictionary translated and published by bishop Jón Arnason in 1738. It is
modeled on a Latin-Danish dictionary compiled by professor Hans Gram of Copenhagen.
Jón Árnason translated the examples of word usage in Gram and it is precisely these exam-
ples that are of use for historical research.
Selected examples on the inflection of nouns and adjectives are discussed and com-
pared with two i8th-century works. One is the Icelandic grammar of Jón Magnússon
(JM), which he wrote in Latin in the years 1737 to 1738 around the same time Jón Árna-
son was working on the dictionary (Kl). Secondly, inflectional forms in K1 are compared
with Jóhannes B. Sigtryggsson’s research on the language of reverend Jón Steingrímsson’s
autobiography (Æv), which was written in the latter half of the i8th century.
The main inflectional classes of nouns and adjectives were discussed, concentrating on
morphological changes that occurred from Old Icelandic down to Modern Icelandic. It
emerges that K1 agrees with Jóhannes B. Sigtryggsson’s findings concerning the language
of Jón Steingrímsson’s biography. Together they form a good source about the language
at a certain stage of the language history. They agree rather well with JM even though he
is more inclined towards the inflection of the earlier stages of the language.
Guðrún Kvaran
Stofnun Ama Magnússonar í íslenskum fmðum — Háskóli Islands
Neshaga 16
IS-ioy Reykjavík, ÍSLAND
gkvaran@hi.is