ARKIV FÖR NORDISK FILOLOGI UTGIVET MED UNDERSTÖD AV AXEL KOCKS FOND FÖR NORDISK FILOLOGI SAMT STATSBIDRAG FRÅN SVERIGE DANMARK OCH NORGE GENOM TURE JOHANNISSON UNDER MEDVERKAN AV KRISTIAN HALD EYVIND FJELD HALVORSEN JÓN HELGASON LUDVIG HOLM-OLSEN VALTER JANSSON PETER SKAUTRUP ELIAS WESSEN NITTIOTREDJE BANDET SJÄTTE FÖLJDEN. ELFTE BANDET M CMLXXVIII CWK GLEERUP Innehåll Benediktsson, Hreinn, professor, Reykjavik: Lo. mikill : mykill . 48- 62 Benson, Sven, professor, Göteborg, Ejder, Bertil, professor, Lund, och Pamp, Bengt, arkivchef, Lund: Litteraturkrönika 1977 ......... 228-244 Blume, Herbert, Dr. phil., Braunschweig: Sprachtheorie und Sprachenlegitimation im 17. Jahrhundert in Schweden und in Kontinentaleuropa .................................................................................... 205-218 Clover, Carol, Associate Professor, Harvard: Skaldic Sensibility .. 63- 81 Dyvik, Helge J. J., mag. art., Bergen: Breaking in Old Norse and Related Languages: A Reassessment of the Phonetic Conditions .. 1-37 Ejder, Bertil, se ovan. Fix, Hans, M. A., Saarbrücken: Grágás Konungsbók (GkS 1157 fol.) und Finsens Edition ................................................................................ 82-115 Grøtvedt, Per Nyquist, Dr. philos., Oslo: Språksituasjonen i sørøst- norsk før og etter den lutherske reformasjon .................................... 186-191 Hald, Kristian, professor, København: Johannes Brøndum-Nielsen 219-224 Hallberg, Peter, professor, Göteborg: Direct Speech and Dialogue in Three Versions of Óláfs Saga Helga .............................................. 116-137 Haugen, Einar, professor, Belmont: Bemerkninger til en anmel­ delse .............................................................................................................. 225-226 Heller, Rolf, Dr. phil., Leipzig: Sturla Þórðarson und die Islander­ sagas. Überlegungen zu einer wichtigen Frage in der Sagafor­ schung .......................................................................................................... 138-144 Johannisson, Ture, professor, Göteborg: Meddelande ....................... 227-227 Kabell, Aage, professor, Aarhus: Die Inschrift auf dem Schädel­ fragment aus Ribe .................................................................................... 38- 47 Motz, Lotte, Dr. phil., Hollis, NY: The Hero and His Tale. Response to Whitaker ................................................................................................. 145-148 Myhren, Magne, assistent, Oslo: Ivar Aasen og jamvektregelen .... 192-198 Oresnik, Janez, professor extraordinarius, Ljubljana: The Modern Icelandic Epenthesis Rule Revisited ................................................... 166-173 Pamp, Bengt, se ovan. Pétursson, Magnús, Dr., Hamburg: L’élément temporel. Un Probleme de prononciation illustré par un exemple de 1’islandais moderne, langue å quantité ................................................................... 174-181 Ross, Margaret Clunies, Senior Lecturer, Sydney: The myth of Geijon and Gylfi and its function in Snorra Edda and H eim s­ kringla .......................................................................................................... 149-165 Sandqvist, Carin, fil. mag., Lund: En avhandling om färöisk syntax . 182-185 Utterström, Gudrun, docent, Umeå: Ålderdomlighet utan ålder? En replik om Dalalagen .......................................................................... 199-204 Till red. insända skrifter .............................................................................. 245-248 HELGEJ. J. D Y V IK Breaking in Old Norse and Related Languages: A Reassessment of the Phonetic Conditions 1 I Breaking (“brytning”) in Old Norse is the term for the process by which PGmc short /e/ was diphthongized with the ultimate result of a rising diphthong with a consonantal high front first element and a back vowel as its second element: /ia/, /io/. Examples of the change are */bergan/> /biarga/ inf., */erþö/> /iorþ/ f. nom. sg., */geböz/> /giafar/ f. nom. pl., */eburaz/> /iofurr/ m. nom. sg. It will be argued in this paper that the traditional theories about this pheno- menon are seriously inadequate in that they fail to capture significant regulari- ties in the phonemic surroundings of those vowels which underwent breaking. An alternative theory which accounts for a much higher number of forms will be proposed, and it will be attempted to show that this theory is both phonetic- ally plausible and allows us to connect ON breaking with the strikingly similar phenomena in Old English. This desirable connection is probably precluded by the traditional theories, and this may be counted as another of their weak- nesses. The plan for the exposition is as follows. Section II contains a brief discus- sion of the traditional theories and the possible reasons for their inadequacy. Section III tries to establish the original phonemic surroundings of the vowels which underwent breaking, without any preconceived ideas about the phonetic conditions for the change. The discussion will be based on the relevant forms in the Old Norwegian Book of Homilies, AM 619 4° (abbreviated GNH) from about 1200 A.D.; but where the material from this text shows significant lacu- nae, forms from other texts will be drawn into the discussion. The conclusion will be that the phonemic surroundings are not so homogeneous as maintained by some of the traditional theories. In section IV the phonemic surroundings isolated in the previous section will be analysed in their distinctive features on the basis of an independently motivated theory about the distinctive and redundant features in PGmc. It will appear from this analysis that the hetero- geneity of the phonemic surroundings is superficial, in that the further analysis reveals highly specific traits which the breaking forms originally had in com­ mon. On this basis a theory about the phonetic process will be sketched. In section V the perspective is widened to Old Swedish, where we find the condi­ tions for breaking to have been somewhat more general. Section VI deals ' This paper is a Condensed version of the main parts of a mag. art. thesis: Gammelnordisk brytning i gammelengelsk belysning (Universitetet i Bergen 1976) (unpublished). The work was partly supported by a student grant from Norges almenvitenskapelige forskningsråd. 2 Helge J.J. Dyvik briefly with the Old English phenomena, and in section VII the conclusions are summarized. II Foremost among the traditional theories about breaking is that of Axel Kock, which has dominated practically all textbooks and standard works in our Century. Although details in his theory about umlaut and breaking changed from the time he started grappling with the problems in the 1880ies until he reached his final version in Kock 1911-16, the main principles were present from the outset. I shall be concerned only with Kock 1911-16 in this paper. Kock’s theory about breaking stands out in marked contrast to previous theories in the last Century. Its main characteristic is that breaking is always explained as the effect of an unstressed vowel in the following syllable. I shall be referring to this kind of theory as a theory of Vocalic Breaking (VB). The theories prevalent before Kock had also included consonants and consonant clusters among the conditioning factors; such theories will be referred to as theories of Consonantal Breaking (CB). A CB-theory will thus explain some, but not necessarily all, instances of breaking as an effect of consonants on a preceding monophthong. A good example of a CB-theory (which deserved more attention than it seemed to get) is that of Hermann Paul 1879. Paul included among the conditioning factors the vowels -u and -o, and the post- vocalic consonant clusters / + consonant, r + consonant, and fn . I believe that Paul’s theory (which is not developed in detail), supplied with later insights concerning the PGmc phoneme system, would have come very close to the mark. It is not at all clear what considerations led to the replacement of CB-theories with VB-theories. A general desire to reduce umlaut and breaking phenomena to a common formula hardly constitutes empirical evidence for a new theory. Still, this idea seems to have been predominant, especially in connection with the so-called “ epenthesis-theory” for all such phenomena. This is particularly evident in the writings of Bengt Hesselman (see below). On the whole, there is a strong flavour of apriorism about the VB-theories. The principles invoked to account for the mass of counter-examples are some- times extremely ad hoc; Kock’s treatment of counter-examples makes it difficult even to imagine any kind of evidence which would lead him to question the basic tenet that breaking is always caused by an unstressed vowel. His proposed explanations for counter-examples fall into the two usual neo- grammarian categories: the problematic forms either result from other sound- laws (i.e. they involve refinements of the formulation of the sound-law causing breaking), or they result from analogical influences. Except for the familiar misgivings we tend to have to-day about the capacity of this conceptual apparatus to explain all facts about linguistic change, there is nothing intrinsic- ally wrong with it: both the regularity of sound change and the operation of analogy are well-established facts. The accusation of ad hoc-construction con- Breaking in Old Norse and Related Languages 3 cerns rather the way the concepts are applied. I shall return to Kock’s and Hesselman’s proposed