Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1964, Page 93

Toward the phonetic description of Faroese vowels
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binations of vowel plus written v). It is not just a question
of structural doctrine, and it seems most reasonable to admit
that there may be more than one valid solution, although
some phonemic interpretations may be better motivated
than others.* 1) It is not the aim of this paper to discuss the
phonemic structure of Faroese but rather to touch upon
the purely phonetic aspects of the problems just mentioned,
i. e. the match of long and short vowels and the more or
less diphthongal character of long vowels.
As for the short vowels it is a basic problem in Faroese
as in several related languages whether these vowels are
“lax” in contradistinction to the tense, long vowels. This
problem is of less consequence in the halbopen and open
vowels as in hetta, høgga (outside Suðuroy), hátta, hatta
(in Lockwood’s IPA notation [e, æ, o, a]), but the more
close vowels, which may be exemplified by hitta, húski,
hugga are rather indeterminate in quality. Roughly speaking,
they may be taken as a kind of i, y, u or as a kind of e,
ø, o. Lockwood uses the IPA symbols for lax i, y, u,
whereas Jakobsen treats the individual vowels differently.
*) The Faroese vowel system set up by Kenneth G. Chapman:
Icelandic—Norwegian Linguistic Relationships p. 131 f. (1962) repre*
sents an interesting effort to present the structural pattern in an eco*
nomic way. It is, however, not clearly understood why the author has
chosen just that analysis, and it seems to me rather problematic to use
an apparently slightly arbitrary phonemicization of this kind as the
basis of far»reaching comparative conclusions. To my knowledge no
really convincing phonemic analysis of the vowels has as yet appeared.
I wish to emphasize in this context that the broad transcription of
Føroysk—donsk orðabók2 (1961) cannot be judged as a strictly phone«
mic transcription, but rather as a kind of practical approximation. The
present author has not published any phonemic analysis of Faroese
vowels, but I wish to mention that in my opinion such an analysis
will not lead to exactly the type of solution which the broad tran-
scription in question may be said to reflect. It is thus somewhat beside
the point when Wayne O'Neil in a review in Scandinavian Studies 34»
p. 198 (1962) criticizes the presentation as not being “truly phonemic”
(this is not said to express disagreement with his suggestions).