Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2013, Side 224

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Michael Schulte
onwards (cf. §10.5, pp. 240—241). A neat chronological approach including the
succession of syncope and other sound changes would help to delimit the periods
in question and clarify the modus operandi at work.
7. Internal rhyme between a and p — runic spelling evidence at hand?
The author points to the vowels a and 9 (IPA symbol [0]) forming perfect rhyme
despite their constituting distinct phonemes. Several approaches to the problem
are under scrutiny. As said, Haukur dismisses Anderson’s approach in terms of
deep structure stating that all “9-vowels” are derived by K-umlaut from underly-
ing /a/. The author also rejects Hreinn Benediktsson’s structural account
(Benediktsson 2002 [1963]) which argued for a partial complementary distribu-
tion (see §10.2, pp. 235—236). Haukur’s principle objection is that other
phoneme pairs do likewise stand in a particular complementary distribution but
do not rhyme in this way. It may further be added that even the structural idea
of the “phoneme” itself has lost part of its stronghold and explanatory force in
the modern linguistic community.
When it comes to the notion of phonemic writing, one of the problems we
are faced with concerns the nature of the runic alphabet in the Viking Age, viz.
the younger futhark. This is by no means a phonemic tool with a “perfect fit”
between phonemes and graphemes. Under this focus, the “multifunctionality” of
runes is a core feature which has been addressed by several runologists: terms
such as “flerverdige runer” (Seim 2013) or “multifunctional runes” capture this
trait (Schulte 2004, 2009). It goes without saying that a writing system with only
sixteen graphemes lends itself to a certain degree of ambiguity. A case in point is
the 6th line of the Karlevi stanza which reads ruk starkr i tanmarku (Skj. A
T187): rógstarkr íDanmprku (Skj. B T177). There is a slight problem involved in
Haukur’s evaluation of spellings in Viking Age runic inscriptions. Focusing on
the in-rhyme between /a/ and /9/, Haukur points to the above line in the
famous dróttkvóitt stanza on the Karlevi runestone from Öland (DR 411) around
1000 A.D. The following statement is clearly in need of comment (p. 78):
Sérhljóðin sem mynda aðalhendinguna eru táknuð með sömu rún og mega
vel hafa haft sama framburð í munni þess sem orti.
The runic spelling evidence on the Karlevi stone provides no good grounds on
which to base this phonological judgement. Rather, it is explicable in terms of the
grapheme-phoneme correspondences of the younger futhark.
8. Summing up
The bottomline is that Haukur’s dissertation offers a valuable approach to the
interfaces between phonology and metrics. Its weaknesses including the reliance