From: tgpedersen
Message: 20281
Date: 2003-03-24
> At 5:25:38 AM on Monday, March 24, 2003, tgpedersen wrote:Not limited to Icelandic, cf Jecha "goddess of hunting" and 'jagen'
>
> > 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.
>