Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2018, Page 159

13th century manuscripts, but the evidence does not only consist of spellings like dagur
where the epenthetic /u/ is represented in the orthography. Spellings like móðr for etymo-
logically correct móður ‘mother’ (oblique cases in the sg.) are also considered to be impor-
tant evidence for the epenthesis. Such examples are standardly explained as instances of
inverse spelling, namely as follows: The scribe knows that the word for ‘day’ is often
spelled dagr with no <u> although he pronounces this word with a /u/ — because he has
the u-epenthesis in his language. So he assumes that the word móður, which he also pro-
nounces with /u/, could be spelled móðr, although the /u/ in móður is original and etymo-
logically correct and not epenthetic. In this sense the (alleged) inverse spelling of móðr is
considered to be “incorrect” (or hypercorrect). In this paper it is argued, on the other hand,
that such examples could in many instances just as well be interpreted as evidence for lin-
guistic (phonological or phonetic) variation: When the u-epenthesis was a change in
progress, there was extensive alternation in the speech community (and even within the
speech of individuals, i.e. intra-speaker variation) between words with and without the
epenthetic /u/, adequately represented as dagur and dagr, respectively. Speakers growing
up in such an environment could very well “assume” (unconsciously) that parallel alterna-
tions like móður and móðr also existed. If so, spellings like móðr would not be “inverse” but
adequate representation of existing pronunciation at the time. Several other examples of
alleged inverse spellings are discussed, the main point being that it is not given a priori that
they have to be interpreted in the traditional way as spelling “mistakes” (or instances of
hypercorrection) but could just as well be considered evidence for linguistic variation. But
they would, of course, continue to be evidence for the relevant linguistic change.
Höskuldur Þráinsson
Háskóla Íslands
IS-101 Reykjavík, ÍSLAND
hoski@hi.is
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