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 b�r-a
2 b�r-er
3 b�r-e
pl
1 b�r-em
2 b�r-e�
3 b�r-e
I understand from Gordon that � (hook o) to � and then i-ulaut to �.
So why /e/ for /i/ in all the endings?
4. Last thing: for '9' and '10' Lass gives OIc ni� and ti�, instead of
the expected n�u and t�u; '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.