Studia Islandica - 01.06.1949, Page 30

S U M M A R y.
An older generation of grammarians used to classify sound
changes according to the categories isolative or combinative.
H. C. Wyld defines these terms as follows: “By isolative sound
change is meant change which occurs in a sound without any
influence being exerted upon it by other sounds in the word or
sentence. By combinative sound change is meant a change in pro-
nunciation brought about by the influence of other sounds in the
same word or sentence.” (A Short History of English, 3rd ed.,
N.Y., 1927, p.46.)
Many sound changes in the history of Icelandic are combina-
tive. So for instance the umlauts (mutations, i- and u-shifts) and
the breaking; consonant assimilations like komdu > kondu,
hem-pa > hemp-a, fors > foss; intrusion of consonants as s( tj núa,
or vowels as maOfuJr; hapologies like póstfstjjórn; contractions
like fyrdJr. Unvoicing of final consonants, all changes in sandhi,
many lengthenings and shortenings, and most phenomena con-
nected with the accent are combinative. Some changes not readily
observable by ear, but clear enough by instrumental means, are
likewise of this kind.
Many assimilations, haplologies, shortenings, and losses of sounds
are obvious simplifications. One may view them askance and call
them slovenly speech habits, or with approval and call them
euphonies.
In the following we shall try to explain some non-combinative
sound changes. Some of them could perhaps hardly be called iso-
lative, yet others are unquestionably of that kind.
When the compound place name of Eydalir becomes either Ey-
talir or (more commonly) Eyddalir in the speech of the natives
of Breiðdalur (East Iceland), the real reason is that the com-
pound word, being common (the name of the parsonage), is at-
tracted to the still more common class of uncompounded tri- or
disyllabic words. Such words never contain an intervocalic -d-,
but -t- and -dd- are frequent between vowels. Obviously then the
-d- in Eydalir is changed so as to conform to the customary
sound forms in uncompounded words.
This, then, is an analogical sound change, caused by the system
itself.
The natives also pronounce Breiddalur for Breiðdalur. And Od
dd could of course easily be looked upon as an assimilation. But