Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2021, Blaðsíða 175

a single substitution for an original reading skjǫldr (Tarsi 2019b). This explana-
tion was elaborated by applying the stemmatic method, thanks to which it was
established that buklari was not a lectio difficilior. It is thus the last possible and
plausible explanation available.
In general, no diatopic trend was found, in light of the fact that no diatopic
approach was taken. This would, in all likelihood, not have led to any significant
or consistent result. This a priori consideration was based on the available data.

2.2 Stylistic and pragmatic matters
The objectives of the dissertation did not include an investigation of style. Neither
did they comprise an analysis of the process of acclimatization of the words, but
rather took them at their face value, i.e. as they appear in the texts. One of the
objectives of the dissertation was on the other hand to provide a classification of
loans in the investigated period and to explore the dynamics of the interplay
between loanwords and native synonyms in order to establish a set of correspon-
dences between them.
As far as the first attestation of both loanwords and native words is con-
cerned, this is given by means of an abbreviation to a work or author/poem
when ever a word is discussed. The reader should refer to the list of abbreviations
at the beginning of the work. In the list of abbreviations, the age of the cited
manu script witnesses for each work is also given.
As for the diatopic approach to manuscript inquiry, addressing the possible
pragmatic issues involved with the use of loanwords and native synonyms in the
Icelandic medieval literature would not, in my opinion, lead to any significant
result, as it would be tied to direct speech and hence to narrative prose, where the
number of word pairs of the type investigated in the dissertation is scant.
As far as matters of style are concerned, the chief result in this respect is that
there exists a relationship between the degree of semantic specificity and the
quantity of word pairs (a “law of semantic specificity”), which translates into a
disproportionately bigger number of word pairs in those text genres which make
use of specific technical terminology than in other genres. The unexpected higher
number of word pairs found in chivalric sagas is due to the presence of a list of
sins in one version of Alexanders saga, which constitutes “noise” in the data col-
lection, as explained in the concluding chapter (pp. 221–222). I shall leave it to
others to delve more into stylistic and pragmatic features (if any) that might
impinge on the use of loanwords and native words in Icelandic medieval litera-
ture (or any other medieval literature).

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