Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2021, Side 168

which renders Lat. evangelista: we are told on p. 55 that its form is very close to OE
godspellere but its late attestation (13th century) makes an Old English origin unlike-
ly. Nonetheless, godspellere continued in use during the Middle English period (see
MED, s.v. gospellere, where spellings with <d> are dominant until the 14th centu-
ry), so why could the term not have been borrowed later? The reader is left won-
dering why those other options are not considered. Similarly, on p. xxix of the
introduction OIcel. bátr ‘boat’ is given as an Old Frisian loanword; why could the
term not derive from Old English bāt? Of course, Prof. Schulte has spoken about
the possibility of polygenesis, and I think that this is something that needs to be
explored in more detail and needs to be better explained.

Phonological and morphological explanations
Etymological discussions could have made much more explicit the phonological
and morphological factors that have been taken into consideration when estab-
lishing the source language(s) of a particular loanword. For instance, on p. 30 we
are told:
The phonological structure of OIcel. dívísera bears clear witness that it can-
not have been borrowed directly from Lat. dīvidere but must rather have
come from Med.Lat. divisare (on the two Latin verbs see also REW, s.vv.).
The coexistence of OIcel. dívísera and dívídera suggests a double borrowing
process, the former from OFr. deviser and the latter from MLG dividēren.
Why is it necessary to introduce Old French and Middle Low German as inter-
mediary languages? Why can the loans not have come directly from the two
Latin forms? Are we looking at the suffix -era instead of -are for dívísera and the
common presence of -era as a verbal suffix in verbs borrowed from Middle Low
German as the main factors here? How reliable are these factors? A thorough dis-
cussion of the process of adaptation of the loans into Icelandic and the impact
that this makes on etymological decisions is missing from the dissertation.
Similarly, the reader is left wondering about the reasons why, on pp. 35–36,
klerkr, which is said to have come from Norwegian, can be considered to have
derived “either from English [cleric] or directly from Latin [clericus]” but on p. 31
we are told, with regard to expens, that its
phonological shape clearly demonstrates that Lat. expensum is not likely to be
the source. Although the word could, in theory, be a direct Latin loan (< Lat.
expensa), it is also noteworthy that OFr. expense (or Anglo-Norman expens)
would equally qualify as a potential, and possibly even more likely, source.
Why can Lat. clericus be considered as the source of klerkr but Lat. expensum can-
not be considered as the source for expens? Does it have to do with the evolution
Sara M. Pons-Sanz168