Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2021, Page 157

Looking at the fate of the constituents of the excerpted word pairs after 1550,
I have found five possible outcomes. These results will need deeper investigation
in the future. As for now, they give a synchronic picture of the constituents of
each word pair today, but they say nothing about the journey of these words after
1550. The five outcomes found are:
1) The loanword is most widely/only used (e.g. hvítasunna – pínisdagar).
2) The native word is most widely/only used (e.g. amor – ást/elska (elsk -
hugi)).
3) The loanword and the native word are still used as synonyms (but can be
polarized e.g. diaphasically as skrifa – rita).
4) Loanword and native word are semantically polarized (e.g. píka –
mær/stulka [rectius stúlka]).
5) Neither word is attested in Modern Icelandic (e.g. cubicus – verpilstala,
Mod.Icel. teningur, teningstala).
In numbers, these five possible outcomes translate as follows: In the great major-
ity of cases (93) the native word has ousted the loanword. The opposite is valid
only in six cases, all of which are very old loans (e.g. ambátt, biskup, kirkja). In 38
cases the words can still be used as synonyms, but they are for the most part
polarized on an axis different from the semantic one. In nine cases the words are
semantically polarized. These results, and especially those involving which of the
two, loanword or native word, is still present in the Icelandic lexicon, harmonize
well with what we know happened in the history of Icelandic after 1550 with
purist language policies, especially from the 19th century on. The history and fate
of all lost synonymic loanwords in Icelandic is a subject for future research.

references
See full list of references on pp. 178–181.

Matteo Tarsi
Institutionen för nordiska språk
Uppsala Universitet
Sweden
matteo.tarsi@nordiska.uu.se
Loanwords and native words in Old and Middle Icelandic 157