Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2021, Side 166

alternation between the terms in various manuscripts of the same text. I would
like to make a number of suggestions in relation to the analysis of these types of
interaction that might help to strengthen the significance of the work further.

Diachronic and diatopic differences
It is a pity that, in spite of its large and diverse corpus, the dissertation does not
present a more in-depth account of possible diachronic and / or diatopic trends
or differences in relation to the interaction between loanwords and ‘native’
terms. The dissertation includes explanations of the various manuscript wit-
nesses for each text; however, this information, as well as some indication
(when ever possible) of the scriptoria involved in the production of the manu-
scripts, should have been better integrated into the discussion of the handling of
each pair of terms. This would have facilitated the exploration of a series of rel-
evant topics, such as possible lexical preferences, in particular scriptoria / areas
(cf. the use of the so-called Winchester vocabulary in Old English texts; see
Hofstetter 1988), or chronological changes in the handling of loanwords (e.g.
whether earlier manuscripts might tend to include more technical loans with
minimum morphological or phonological adaptations while later ones might
prefer to render those concepts through the native lexicon). These trends might
not be there but it is important to ascertain as much as possible what the situa-
tion might have been.

Stylistic and pragmatic matters
While the different types of alternation between loanwords and ‘native’ words
are given for each text, the discussions do not include much analysis of the pos-
sible stylistic and / or pragmatic factors that might have influenced lexical choic-
es. These are some of the issues that could have been discussed:
1.  Differences between the contexts where the loanword and the ‘native’
term appear in cases of intratextual variation: I am thinking, for instance, about
whether we have examples of the use of the loanword when the text renders an
original in a different language more closely and the use of the native terms in
those contexts that are clearly expansions of the original; or the use of the loan-
word by specific characters as opposed to the use of the native terms by others.
At the beginning of each chapter, there is a table with a description of various loci,
contexts, where the terms are attested; however, this description should then be
accompanied by further analysis. I would have also liked to read more about
whether we can see any differences between those loanwords that are hardly
integrated into Icelandic (in terms of their phonology or morphology) and those
which come up time and again in various texts and that are likely to have lost
their original sense of foreignness for contemporary speakers (e.g. krank).
Sara M. Pons-Sanz166