Rit (Vísindafélag Íslendinga) - 01.06.1970, Page 113
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(2) When the phonetic differentiation of the short from the
long vowels took place, it did not affect the system in the
positions of neutralization, for the simple reason that the fea-
ture short/long was not operative in this system. As we saw
above, in the earliest period, each archiphoneme was regularly
identified with the short vowel rather than with the long one.
But then, when the short vowels changed through their dif-
ferentiation from the corresponding long ones, each archi-
phoneme, simply by remaining unchanged, became more
similar to the long than to the short vowel of the respective
pair in the system of maximal distinction (in the stressed
preconsonantal position). This appears in the above diagram:
as each short vowel changed in the direction indicated by
the arrow, the only remaining vowel having the same quality
as the archiphoneme was the distinctively long vowel; thus,
for example, as short i was lowered, long í was the only
remaining vowel having the same vowel timbre as the archi-
phoneme I.
This led to a shift in identification from short to long of
each archiphoneme. From then on, in the orthography, each
archiphoneme was regularly denoted by the long-vowel sym-
bol instead of by the short-vowel symbol. Thus, unlike the
Book of Homilies, the early-fourteenth-century GkS 2087 40
' which is the only manuscript from this period that makes
consistent use of the accent mark to denote vowel length—
regularly uses the accent mark over vowel symbols in the
positions of neutralization; instead, for instance, of bua ‘to
Bve’, tio ‘ten’, sva ‘so’, ha-(tíþ) ‘feast’ in the Book of Homilies,
this manuscript has búa, tíu, svá, há-, etc. From this stage
onwards, the subsystem in the positions of neutralization fol-
lowed the development of the long subsystem, taking part in
the mergers which occurred in this system, as well as in the
diphthongization of the long vowels; in Modern Icelandic,
the equivalent of each archiphoneme is identical with the
representative of the corresponding long vowel (H. Benedikts-
son 1967/68:55-61).