Rit (Vísindafélag Íslendinga) - 01.06.1970, Page 58
56
lels can be demonstrated for other social isoglosses, as has been
shown by the anthropologist Sigurd Erixon in his studies of
Norwegian and Swedish cultural contacts (1933): the North
Swedish and Norwegian area which he callsfábodomrádet often
coincides with what I have called Inner Scandinavia, and
similarly shows innovations that function as relics.
(1) The Retroflex Consonants. One of the most con-
spicuous innovations which East Norwegian shares with Cen-
tral and North Swedish is the retroflexion of dentals under
the influence of a preceding r. The change represents a mutual
assimilation, in which r loses its tongue trill and the following
dental is articulated in the r-position. The result is a set of
retroflex consonants, which may be written t, d, n, s and are
by some regarded as new phonemes, by others as overlapping
clusters of rt, rd, rn, rs (e.g. bort, lordag, barn, mars) (Map 3).
Where this assimilation did not take place, the r either re-
mained tongue-trilled (as in West Norwegian, Faroese, and
Icelandic) or was made uvular (as in Danish, South Nor-
wegian, and South Swedish); we here disregard other assimila-
tions. In almost exactly the same territory an entirely new
retroflex phoneme was developed, the so-called ‘thick V of
Norwegian and Swedish. This unique phoneme is not an l
at all, but a retroflex flap; by this is meant that the tip of
the tongue initiates the sound in the retracted r-position and
then flattens out in a sharp flap to the floor of the mouth,
which leaves the tongue resting against the lower teeth (Storm
1908:105-111). The initial position diífers from l in not having
a lateral, but a central opening; to most non-native observers
it sounds like an r, most similar to English r except for the flap.
The reason the retroflex flap is called ‘thick V is that one
of its historical sources is CSc. I; the other, which occurs in a
slightly smaller area, is CSc. rð (Map 4). The l that became
a retroflex was clearly a non-dental allophone of l, which
Noreen (1904:31; 1923:42) calls ‘cacuminal’ and identifies
with the modern sound; Sommerfelt (1927) pointed out that
the allophone in question probably was merely a velar or