| 1. |
- Axelsdóttir, Katrín, 1968-
(författare)
-
Enn um ald(u)rnara
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Från Island till Sverige och tillbaka. - Uppsala : Uppsala universitet. - 9789150629965 ; , s. 77-94
-
Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The meaning of Old Icelandic aldrnari (most famously in Vǫluspá 55) is obscure, with several interpretations having been proposed. The present article starts with a short survey of earlier proposals and subsequently adds another based on the premise that aldrnari is a loan. Secondly, it is suggested that the word might originally have been a neuter an-stem, *aldrnara, later interpreted as a masculine word, perhaps prompted by the proximity of the masculine noun eimi in the previous line. Finally, some 20th century prose examples of aldurnari are examined. These mainly occur as a part of a semi-fixed expression, which also contains the neuter noun eitur (dat. eitri) ‘poison’. In most cases, aldurnari (which means ‘fire’ in all these modern examples) is treated as a neuter too. This suggests that the form of an obscure word, and thereby its gender, can easily adapt to that of another within the same collocation.
|
|
| 2. |
- Guðmundsdóttir, Aðalheiður, 1965-
(författare)
-
Guðrúnarbrögð hin nýju
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Från Island till Sverige och tillbaka. - Uppsala : Institutionen för nordiska språk. - 9789150629965 ; , s. 9-24
-
Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The article sheds light on the connection between Icelandicliterature and legends of kings and chieftains from France, present-day Germany, andother European countries. Thus, it deals with historical figures who are connected not onlyto the protagonists of Völsunga saga but also to earlier heroic poems such as Atlakviða,the three lays of Guðrún and Guðrúnarvöt. In a broader sense, some literary figures ofthese works, such as Sigurðr Fáfnisbani, Atli Húnakonungr, Þjóðrekr (fromGuðrúnarkviða III), Jörmunrekr, and Jónakr, appear in various sources and poems of theGermanic heroic tradition. This is also the case with the heroine Guðrún Gjúkadóttir, thewife of Sigurðr Fáfnisbani, Atli, and Jónakr, who is known to us as Kriemhild from Germanicpoetry. In this article, an attempt is made to shed new light on the story of Guðrún.Special attention is given to Guðrún’s husbands, and how her different relationships bringtogether some of the leading figures from the period of the Great Migration. The articleargues that Guðrún’s role in this narrative tradition is of great importance and must beconsidered as the central connective element of the narrative units that revolve around thesubject matter of Völsunga saga.
|
|
| 3. |
- Hilmisdóttir, Helga, 1972-
(författare)
-
Språkkontakt och pragmatik : En empirisk undersökning av pragmatiska lån i isländska tonårspojkars samtal
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Från Island till Sverige och tillbaka. - Uppsala : Uppsala universitet. - 9789150629965 ; , s. 49-67
-
Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article deals with Anglicisms in Icelandic youth language that have pragmatic or discursive functions, and are therefore pragmatic borrowings. The study is empirical and is based on 4 hours and 12 minutes of conversation between fifteen-year old schoolboys who are playing computer games while communicating online. The aim of the study is to do an inventory of the pragmatic borrowings that are used during the conversation, and to discuss their main features. The research questions are as follows: 1) How frequent are the pragmatic borrowings compared to running words in the data? 2) How are the pragmatic borrowings adapted to the receiving language, and which aspects should be considered in the analysis? The study shows that pragmatic borrowings are frequent in the research material, around 4.3 % of all running words were categorized as such. An interactional analysis of some of the items also showed that when a pragmatic element has been incorporated into Icelandic, it ceases to be a part of the source language and develops in its own way. Finally, it is argued that due to the frequency of use, pragmatic borrowing may have deeper structural effects on the Icelandic language than the borrowing of context-bound content words.
|
|
| 4. |
- Indriðason, Þorsteinn G., 1959-
(författare)
-
Hvorfor er suffikset -legur såpass produktivt i islandsk? : En historisk utgreiing
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Från Island till Sverige och tillbaka. - Uppsala : Uppsala universitet. - 9789150629965 ; , s. 175-196
-
Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The study of diachronic productivity can give us some valuable insights into the forces that shape and expand the vocabulary of a language (see e.g. Katamba 1993, Bauer 2001 and Haspelmath 2002). In this paper I present a study of the diachronic productivity of the Icelandic derivational suffix -legur measured as a number of different derivations overtime. The corpus used in the study is a compilation of words from the Ritmálssafn (Eng. database of written language), whose excerpted texts cover the period from the middle of the sixteenth century to the twentieth century (see Rögnvaldsson 1987 and Svavarsdóttir et al. 1993). It is generally acknowledged that the suffix is very productive so the question to be answered here is why. The data from the corpus gives a fairly clear picture of the types and structures of bases that participate in the word-formation and features that contribute to the productivity of the suffix. It can occur with bases of most word-classes with the exception of verbs (infinitive), and with a variety of bases from roots to more complex bases. There also seem to operate very few restrictions, grammatic, phonetic or semantic, between the base and the suffix. In addition to this, the suffix was originally an independent word in the Proto-Nordic period and developed into a derivational suffixthrough grammaticalization. The data uncovers that it still has some word-like features which can have contributed to its even stronger productivity.
|
|
| 5. |
- Jónsdóttir, Margrét, 1951-
(författare)
-
Orðið féskylft
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Från Island till Sverige och tillbaka. - Uppsala : Uppsala universitet. - 9789150629965 ; , s. 121-136
-
Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The article deals with the word féskylft. The form, which is formally the nom./acc. neuter of the adjective féskylf(u)r, is used here as the unmarked one due to its use in the language. The meaning of féskylft is rather lacking despite the clear understanding of fé as ‘sheep/livestock; money’. As a compound word, féskylft always refers to expenses, spending or lack of money. In the article, it is argued that skylf- has its origin in a root with fl as correspondent verbs in Swedish demonstrate. Originally, the root vowel was a long one, ý, which later became short, y. Thus féskýflt became féskylft. Furthermore, variants as skylmt or skýlt will briefly be discussed. The word féskylft is mostly used as a predicate with the copula verb verða ‘become’; the verbs vera ‘be’ and gerast ‘become’ can have the same function. The experiencer subject with féskylft is in the dative. In the construction hafa féskylft the subject is in the nominative. The word féskylft is not familiar to most people. However, examples are not only found in the old language and dictionaries and glossaries from the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, but also in written texts and formal speeches up to the modern time. Furthermore, there is an example (maybe two) of a young word ending in -skylft. However, it could not be said that skylft is productive in any sense.
|
|
| 6. |
- Kristinsson, Ari Páll, 1960-
(författare)
-
Bonds and boundaries : On the perceived prescriptivist-descriptivist dichotomy
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Från Island till Sverige och tillbaka. - Uppsala : Institutionen för nordiska språk. - 9789150629965 ; , s. 25-38
-
Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In recent years, there has been increased interest in research into prescriptionand prescriptivism. There is broad consensus today that despite the different nature ofdescription and prescription, the boundary is often unclear in practice. Language descriptionstend to contain operative norms while leaving out much of the myriad of possibledeviations, irregularities, and idiosyncrasies. Similarly, while prescriptive grammars anddictionaries normally leave out non-standard variants, their prescribed standard forms typicallyreflect written or oral texts by some, or many, writers/speakers of a language. Anoverlap is apparently inevitable, and that may be one of the reasons why traditional academic discourse on the description-prescription relationship sometimes tends to be vague,or even contradictory.Contemporary research underscores the importance of distinguishing different types ofprescription. However, common discourse on the phenomenon is often limited to linguisticfeatures and forms, that at some point may have been recommended by language managers in compliance with tradition and elite culture, while prescription in language indeedconcerns much more than e.g. aesthetic judgments, or resistance to language change. Research has shown how prescription has consequences for language use, variation, and change. Ignoring prescription in modern linguistics would be equally counterproductive as, for example, refusing to acknowledge sociolinguistics as a solid and important subfieldin linguistics.The aim of this paper is partly to provide an account (albeit sketchy) of some recent research directions and studies regarding prescription and prescriptivism, and partly,against that backdrop, to add a few Icelandic examples to the body of cases that previouswriters have presented in support of the view that linguistics must acknowledge a description-prescription continuum (rather than a clear-cut ‘dichotomy’), and that there are differenttypes and nuances of prescription.
|
|
| 7. |
- Mårtensson, Lasse, 1973-
(författare)
-
Dvergatal i Uppsala-Eddan
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Från Island till Sverige och tillbaka. - Uppsala : Uppsala universitet. - 9789150629965 ; , s. 95-120
-
Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article deals with the unique name forms in Dvergatal in the so-called Uppsala Edda, DG 11 (henceforth U). In U there are 16 name forms that do not occur in the corresponding position in the other textual witnesses containing Dvergatal, which is a high number compared to the other manuscripts. These forms are analyzed regarding their probable origin. Are they part of another tradition, bearing witness of U’s depending partly on other sources than the other textual witnesses, or are they secondary forms, originating in scribal errors or reinterpretations of different kinds on the basis of the primary forms? The investigation shows that the divergent forms in U are secondary, and they can be divided into four categories. The first category (four examples) consists of the morphological reinterpretation -inn > -(n)ni, with examples like Náinn > Náni and Óinn > Ónni. This change does not affect the root morpheme, and thus the basic semantics of the names do not change. Instead, the result is that a rather uncommon ending in names is replaced by one that is highly frequent in names. In the second category (five examples) are instances where a morphologically/semantically simpler form in U replaces a more complicated one in the other textual witnesses. Examples from this category are Ánarr > Annarr and Veigr > Viggr. The third category (five examples) comprises name forms having their origin in a scribal error. Examples are Þrór > Þiórr and Eikinskialdi > Eikinskialli. The new forms have probably been regarded as acceptable by scribes, at least as mythological names, which are often obscure, and they may not have been perceived as errors. Thus they do not have to be errors from the scribe of U, but they may have their origin further back in the transmission chain. In the fourth category are two name forms with uncertain origin, Níningr (< Nípingr) och Dramir (< Draupnir). It in unclear how these formshave originated, but a possibility regarding Níningr is that it has been affected by the previous namn in the list, Náni (with both initial and medial 'n').
|
|
| 8. |
- Pálsson, Heimir, 1944-
(författare)
-
Forn nöfn - fornöfn
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Från Island till Sverige och tillbaka. - Uppsala : Institutionen för nordiska språk. - 9789150629965 ; , s. 39-48
-
Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the two different versions of Snorra-Edda, Konungsbókargerðand Uppsala-gerð, the use of the term or word fornafn offers some thoughts onthe introduction of loan-words into Icelandic. The aim of this short article is to present oneexplanation of different understanding, maybe depending on different knowledge.
|
|
| 9. |
- Schulte, Michael, 1963-
(författare)
-
Between the pagan past and the Christian future : Ragnarǫk features on the memorials of Ledberg, Tullstorp and Skarpåker
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Från Island till Sverige och tillbaka. - Uppsala : Uppsala universitet. - 9789150629965 ; , s. 157-173
-
Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- There are good grounds on which to assume that the on-going Christianization of pre-modern Nordic society in Iceland and mainland Scandinavia had different consequences and side-effects. Not least it entailed a re-evaluation of pre-Christian values and the “old lore” or forneskja. One rather direct reflection of the on-going modernization process was the frequently deployed motif of the “haunting” revenant in the Sagas of Icelanders. Hennig (forthc.) argues that one of the major tasks of this motif in the overall narrative was to visualize threats, hardships, and possibly also drawbacks in an ever modernizing “risk society”. Another different manifestation of this major shift was the recourse to Ragnarǫk as an effective means of heroic praise particularly in the 11th century. Under this focus, Ragnarǫk iconography on the runestones of Ledberg and Tullstorp as well as the use of the earth/upper heaven formula on the Skarpåker stone may have served as tokens of cultural memory in a modernizing society.
|
|
| 10. |
- Tarsi, Matteo, 1988-
(författare)
-
Naming the elements in the Nordic languages (Swedish, Danish, Icelandic) until 1945
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Från Island till Sverige och tillbaka. - Uppsala : Institutionen för nordiska språk. - 9789150629965 ; , s. 137-154
-
Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The article analyzes the names for the chemical elements discovered from antiquityuntil 1945. The etymology of each of the names, which total 96, is given in Section2, together with bibiographical information about their first appearance. In a number ofcases, more names were coined, and, whenever this is still reflected in some languages, itis accounted for (conversely, names such as columbium for niobium are disregarded asthey do not consistute offical names). In the discussion section, the names for the elementsin the three Nordic languages are comparatively analyzed with regard to 1) lexical strategies;2) loanword acquisition; and 3) word formation.
|
|
