The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.1961, Blaðsíða 25

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
23
to trace the way back into pre-historic
mists. I do not think it necessary to
explain further the value of such schol-
arly endeavours.
Modern English has only two dif-
ferent ways of expanding its vocabu-
lary; borrowing words from foreign
languages, even Russian, and com-
pounding words which are already in
use. Therefore it is obvious that an
English-speaking student studying Ice-
landic will enjoy an entirely new lingu-
istic experience. It is left to the reader
to define the values of experience.
INFLEXIONS
To a certain degree the inflexions
of the various parts of speech constitute
the syntax of a language. They also
have to be included in any survey of
the etymological or the philological
aspects where the inflexional endings
are of great importance. It is
virtually impossible for a student to
acquire the most elementary know-
ledge of etymology without being
thoroughly familiar with the declen-
sion systems of some of the highly in-
flected languages, as for instance those
of Gothic, Latin and Icelandic. By
comparing the inflexional endings of
the Old Germanic languages some frag-
ments of their Primitive Germanic par-
ent language can be reconstructed. In
this respect Gothic and Icelandic
would furnish the researcher with most
excellent material. To illustrate this
point more fully it is necessary to give
examples. Dagr in Old Icelandic means
day. In Gothic we have dags, in Anglo-
Saxon daeg, in Old Saxon dag and Old
High German tag. In this case Gothic
and Icelandic have preserved the Prim-
itive German nominative ending -az (in
Gothic -s and Icel. -r). By comparing
the nominative endings in a few lan-
guages it can be established that the
ending was -os in the Indo-European
language. By applying this method of
comparison the philologist can travel
back into history thousands if not tens
of thousands of years in a relatively
short period of time.
GRADATION SERIES
All the Indo-European languages
have in common a most significant
characteristic, the technical term for
which is “gradation series” (English
philologists have also adopted the Ger-
man “Ablaut”). By gradation is meant
the variation of vowels in the same
roots or suffixes in fixed series, which
arose in the original Indo-European.
This variation is preserved in the lan-
guages descended from IE., though
greatly altered and disguised in many
of them. The universality of the “grad-
ation” makes it highly important from
the philological point of view and it
is necessary that students of language
study it most thoroughly where it ap-
pears in its least altered forms, as for
instance in highly inflexional lan-
guages like Icelandic. By comparing
Icelandic with Primitive Germanic one
will see that the gradation series of the
former have been preserved remark-
ably well. Six out of seven series ap-
pear in die principal parts of the
strong verbs. I shall now compare the
gradation series, as they appear in Ice-
landic, with those of Primitive Ger-
manic in order to prove my point. The
table below is self-explanatory.
1. Icel. f-ei-i-i.
Prim. Germ. 1-ai-i-i.
2. Icel. ju (j6) - au- u- o.
Prim. Germ, eu- au- u- o.
3. Icel. e- a- u- o (exceptional cases
are not included).
Prim. Germ. e(i)-a-u- o.
4. Icel. e- a- a - o (u).