At 5:25:38 AM on Monday, March 24, 2003, tgpedersen wrote:
> Vimmer: 'Oldnordisk formlære' states unequivocally that ON
> -g- is pronounced as either /g/ or, intervocalically as
> /G/, but in contemporary Icelandic only as /g/. What is
> your source for the /x/ pronunciation?
I suspect that on any reasonable analysis <g> is phonemic
/g/ in all environments, so the slants seem inappropriate;
presumably [G], [g], and [x] are intended here.
For the ON pronunciation:
Michael Barnes, _A New Introduction to Old Norse_, Part I,
Grammar, 1999, published with additions and corrections in
2001 by the Viking Society for Northern Research, University
College London, p.11f. E.V. Gordon's well-known
_Introduction to Old Norse_, p.269. Siegfried Gutenbrunner,
_Historische Laut- und Formenlehre des Altisländischen_,
Heidelberg, 1951, p.20. I can probably find more. All
agree that <g> was [x] before <s> and <t>. E.g.,
Gutenbrunner: 'Das _g_ ist im Anlaut, nach _n_ und
verdoppelt ein Verschlußlaut, sonst ein Reibelaut: vor _s_,
_t_ stimmlos, sonst stimmhaft (<barred-g>).'
Barnes, p.17f, and Stefán Einarsson, _Icelandic_ (Baltimore,
1945), p.15, agree that <g> is [x] before <s> and <t> in the
modern language as well.
Brian