the phonology of icelandic and faroese

[...]... the lengthening of the vowel 2 THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT Since the quantity shift mentioned at the end of Section 1.6 took place with similar outcomes in both Icelandic and Faroese, a strict application of the comparative method would place it (like the voicelessness of plosives) in the proto-language or common West Nordic (or Icelando -Faroese) And since, as shown below, a large scale merger of the. .. variations on common themes, different realizations of the same basic trends, and 12 i the historical and theoretical setting many of the features of Icelandic and Faroese are also to be found in West Norwegian varieties, as shown in Chapman (1962), Sandứy (2003), and Ottosson (2003).1 2.1 QUANTITY AND PROSODIC STRUCTURE As mentioned above, the quantity system of Old Icelandic (and by implication CWN)... contents 9.3 The consonantal phonotactics of Icelandic 9.3.1 Initial onsets in Icelandic 9.3.2 Consonants in the Icelandic coda 9.3.3 Internal onsets in Icelandic 9.3.4 More complicated interludes in Icelandic 9.4 The consonantal phonotactics of Faroese 9.4.1 Monosegmental onsets 9.4.2 Initial clusters in Faroese 9.4.3 Faroese coda consonants 9.4.4 Internal onsets in Faroese 9.5 Gemination of glides and consonants... proper, and Insular Scandinavian, that is prototypically Icelandic (see Rischel 1992 for a typological evaluation, cf also Barnes and Weyhe 1994, Thrinsson 2000, Sandứy 2001; see Petersen 2010a for a discussion of the sociolinguistic relation between Danish and Faroese) The Faroese orthography used today is very archaic and heavily inuenced by the Old and Modern Icelandic standard The third branch of the. .. said that the inectional system of MI is basically the same as that of classical Old Icelandic But in spite of the conservatism, interesting changes have taken place in Icelandic morphosyntax Thus the use of dummies like ỵa it and the verb vera to be has increased over the course of time (cf e.g ă Sigurjnsdttir and Maling 2001; Benediktsson 2002; Rognvaldsson 2005), and the o o  e use of prepositions... system of long and short vowels was in both cases prevented by the separate development of the two subsystems (like diphthongization of the originally long vowels and changes in the quality of the originally short ones), these processes should by the same logic be dated before the quantity changes But the paradoxical fact is that the changes in vowel quality are widely different in Icelandic and Faroese, ... usually called the quantity shift, involving (among other things) a shortening of the old long vowels in closed syllables, and the lengthening of old short ones in open syllables, has eliminated the short disyllables and the overlong syllables (to the extent that their rhythmic character was special) This happened in both Faroese and Icelandic (showing its marks in Icelandic poetry in the fteenth or... applies to the quantity shift itself, since although the general trend is obvious, the shift must be divided into such different subparts as vowel lengthening, vowel shortening, and the abolition of the structural opposition between types of syllabic quantity Also, the results of the quantity shift differ in detail between Icelandic and Faroese, for example as in the environments of vowel lengthening... described in A fteenth to the seventeenth centuries, but little is known about the dates of the changes in Faroese There is no metrical evidence regarding the time of the shortening of vowels in  forms like ast love But the result was that modern forms like Icelandic v st [vist]   certain, bts [pauts] and ast [aust] and austur [ứystYr] and Faroese Island [islant] a Iceland, eystur [est] east etc... name) (Sturlunga 85) 1 The socio-historical settings of the development in the two languages form an interesting contrast In Iceland, the written norm has stayed more or less the same, whereas in the Faroes, there was no written standard until the eighteenth century, Danish serving as the ofcial language and the language of the church But both communities were relatively isolated, and isolation from foreign . alt="" The Phonology of Icelandic and Faroese THE PHONOLOGY OF THE WORLD’S LANGUAGES General Editor: Jacques Durand Published The Phonology of Icelandic and Faroese Kristja ´ nA ´ rnason The Phonology. Hammond The Phonology of Italian Martin Kra ¨ mer The Phonology of Norwegian Gjert Kristoffersen The Phonology of Portuguese Maria Helena Mateus and Ernesto d’Andrade The Phonology and Morphology of. Phonology of Spanish Iggy Roca The Phonology of Greek Anthi Revithiadou The Phonology of Swedish Tomas Riad The Phonology of Washo Alan C. L. Yu THE PHONOLOGY OF ICELANDIC AND FAROESE KristjanA  rnason 1 3 Great