Orð og tunga - 01.06.2006, Page 92

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Orð og tunga
Section 2 describes the phonological prehistory of Olcel. gQS.
The comparative evidence, including the cognate OHG gans, sug-
gests Olcel. gQS contained a nasalized root vowel. Following the gen-
eral merger of nasalized ( and ó in Old Icelandic, g(s should therefore
have become gós. The form gós, however, is not attested. Instead, g(s
became gás, which cannot be the phonological result of g(s, but must
have arisen through analogical restoration of the low back vowel (
under the influence of words with the non-nasal (.
Old Icelandic g(s, plur. gqss 'goose', which originally belonged to
the same inflectional class as mús, plur. mýss 'mouse' and lús, plur.
lýss 'louse', has, in the course of its development down to Modern
Icelandic, undergone two changes that distinguish it from mús and lús,
as described in section 3. On the one hand, the nom./acc. plur. gqss,
phonologically becoming gæss and later gæs, acquired a new plural
morpheme, becoming gæsir. On the other hand, the root vowel æ was
generalized throughout the paradigm, replacing á (< (). Both changes
make their earliest appearance in 16th century written records, and
the evidence suggests the addition of the plural marker -ir preceded
the generalization of the root vowel æ, albeit not by much (§3.1).
The question is bound to arise why the morphologically similar
mús, plur. mýs (< mýss) and lús, plur. lýs (< lýss) did not undergo the
same development. In section 3.2 it is argued that the changes in the
word for goose can be attributed to local markedness, as defined by
Tiersma (1982): due to the fact that geese tend to appear in flocks, the
plural forms of the word for goose are more frequently used than the
singular forms; therefore, contrary to general markedness, the plural
of the word for goose is unmarked and the singular is marked. The un-
marked nom./acc. plur. gæs (< gæss < g(ss) therefore serves as a basic
form in language acquisition (instead of the nom. sing. gás from ear-
lier g(s). When plural forms serve as basic forms they are, as demon-
strated by Tiersma (1982:837-39), prone to under-analysis whereby the
original plural marker is regarded as part of the stem, which, in turn,
calls for the addition of a new plural marker. Thus the nom./acc. plur.
gæs, which was formally distinguished from the nom./acc./dat. sing.
gás only by the root vowel alternation, acquired a new plural marker,
becoming gæsir. The paradigmatic generalization of the root vowel æ
(at the expense of á) also follows from the fact that the nom./acc. plur.
gæs, gæsir was the unmarked form. In the words for mús and lús, by