Might it not be that he's simply using the oldest spelling rules for old
icelandic (not norse), say, they first grammarians spelling? It sure looks
to me as if he's using the oldest Icelandic vowel system I learned. Haukur
may remember this better than I do (since I was the one drawing little comic
series about evil umlauts chasing innoccent vowels, in class), but using e
for i in an unstressed syllable was commonplace at least until the twelfth
century, I think, because of the complicated vowel system. At that time, i
was closer to í than it later became, and the unstressed frontal unrounded
vowel was closer to the stressed vowel e than i (that is, it was written e
because that sound was phonologically closest to an [I] sound). I'm not sure
about the others, but æ (an open e, often written with a hooked e) was a
part of the vowel system at that time, it's the i-umlaut from a. And o was
used for u in unstressed syllables, and even where it is stressed, o and u
have a sligt tendency to get in each other's way (a mess caused (I seem to
recall) by the language's indecision about a-umlaut). And what have you got
against two e's in ellefo? It's spelled with two e's in modern icelandic,
you know. (although the unstressed o has changed to u). Using the first
grammarian's spelling (at least in vowels, not so sure about 'hásteflingar')
seems like rather good practice to me, not at all an error.

Again, this is just a suggestion, I'm hoping that Haukur will shed some
light on the matter

Berglaug


>
> That's a lot of misspellings.
> Did Lass make as many misspellings for the other Germanic languages?
> I noticed that the copyright is 1994,
> but can you verify that this is the first edition,
> and not just a new printing with the first edition
> being, say, 1904, or something like that?
>
>
> In a message dated 11/21/2003 2:25:11 PM Eastern Standard Time,
brahmabull@... writes:
>
> >
> >
> > Greetings!
> >
> > I am an amateur, interested in Old Norse as part of early Germanic. I
> > have been reading Roger Lass's <Old English: A historical linguistic
> > companion> (Cambridge: 1994) and find it helpful in getting control of
> > some basics.
> >
> > There are some misprints or mistakes in the book, and one whole class
> > of them involves Old Icelandic. Can anybody tell me what these forms
> > represent? Oldest attestations, or maybe a mnemonic scheme for learning
> > the paradigms? I have Gordon's book, which I take as my authority.
> >
> > 1. Lass has /e/ for /i/ wherever this appears in the dative singular
> > masc and neut. Even /deg-e/, where he explains the stem change is due
> > to i-umlaut. For i-stem gestr Lass gives nom. pl. gest-er and acc. pl.
> > gest-e.
> >
> > 2. The u-stem example is even stranger:
> > sg.
> > N sun-r for son-r
> > G son-ar
> > D syn-e for syn-i
> > A sun for son
> > pl.
> > N syn-er for syn-ir
> > G son-a
> > D sun-um
> > A sun-o for sun-u
> >
> > BUT a dative -i for foet-i (with oe=ligature)
> >
> > 3. Here is the present conjugation of bera
> > sg
> > 1 bær-a
> > 2 bær-er
> > 3 bær-e
> > pl
> > 1 bær-em
> > 2 bær-eÞ
> > 3 bær-e
> >
> > I understand from Gordon that ö (hook o) to á and then i-ulaut to æ.
> > So why /e/ for /i/ in all the endings?
> >
> > 4. Last thing: for '9' and '10' Lass gives OIc nió and tió, instead of
> > the expected níu and tíu; '11' is ellefo for ellifu.
> >
> > This is not an exhaustive list! I am going to write all these up for
> > the author, but before I can do that I would like to have some idea his
> > reasoning.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Gazariah
> >
> >
> > A Norse funny farm, overrun by smart people.
> >
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> >
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> >
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> >
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>
>
> A Norse funny farm, overrun by smart people.
>
> Homepage: http://www.hi.is/~haukurth/norse/
>
> To escape from this funny farm try rattling off an e-mail to:
>
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>
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>
>