Rit (Vísindafélag Íslendinga) - 01.06.1970, Side 84

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to be clear, however, what place and role Haugen attaches
to the central Swedish dialect of eastern Svealand in this
geographical distribution. As for the connection between Nor-
wegian and Northern Swedish, see my paper, Norrlándska
och rikssvenska, Norrlándsk tidskrift 1956. 2.31.
Haugen has presented eight points of linguistic innovation
which characterize the Central Scandinavian dialect (or lan-
guage). I should like to comment on three of them, viz., points
(4), (5), and (7).
(4) Even though palatal affrication is not Icelandic it
seems to me to be more important that Modern Icelandic
shares the development ofthe dialects ofNorway and northern
Sweden with regard to the phonemized palatalization of
initial as well as medial /k/, /g/, and /y/ before original front
vowels, e.g., in haki, acc. haka, with palatal /j/ or /c/ and
velar /g/ or /k/, respectively; Helgi, acc. Helga, with /j/ and
/g/, respectively; and hagi, acc. haga, with /j/ and /y/, re-
spectively.
(5) The K-umlaut is a Scandinavian innovation and its ab-
sence or leveling in the East Scandinavian area must not be
paralleled with the other Central Scandinavian points, which
‘involve phonemic or morphemic splits which are rejected by
the outer parts of Scandinavia.’ In this case Icelandic is to
be characterized as a colonization dialect or language, which
has pushed a common Scandinavian phonetic innovation to
its most far-reaching consequences as regards phonemic in-
ventory and/or incidence; see Dahlstedt, Scripta Islandica
9.24 (1958), Skírnir 132.48 (1958). Note that there is no
fringe of u-umlaut on the other side of Central Scandinavian,
i.e., in Finland, Gotland, and Denmark.
(7) Dialects which did not take part in ‘the great vowel
shift’ are found in Norrbotten in northern Sweden, e.g., in
the dialect of Ráneá, north of Luleá, which in this respect
shows parallels with Faroese; see Dahlstedt-Ágren, Övre
Norrlands bygdemál 1954.102-106, 202-203, 212-213, and
254-255.