Hugvísindasvið

The Root Vocalism of the Preterite of two

Subclasses of Old
Icelandic VII Class Strong Verbs

Ritgerð til M.A.-prófs

Diego Ferioli

Maí 2010
 Háskóli Íslands
Hugvísindasvið
Medieval Icelandic Studies

The Root Vocalism of the Preterite of

two Subclasses of Old
Icelandic VII Class Strong Verbs

Ritgerð til M.A.-prófs

Diego Ferioli
Kt.: 1510853269

Leiðbeinandi: Haraldur Bernharðsson

Maí 2010
Abstract

The goal of this study is to discuss the controversial evolution of class VII
strong preterites in Old Norse, which retained traces of the old Proto-Indo-
European and Proto-Germanic reduplicated perfect. In particular, the focus
will lay on two subgroups of class VII strong verbs in Old Icelandic, which,
from the 14th century onwards, start being written with a diphthong <ie> in
the preterite root, as if from a long vowel (e.g. hielt, fiekk and snieri, rieri).
Orthographic evidence from the earliest Old Icelandic manuscripts is then
collected, leading to the conclusion that the root vowel in the analysed
preterites forms was clearly a short monophthong (/e/) in early Old
Icelandic.

In light of a review of the theories about the etymology of the preterites of

class VII strong verbs, it is then proposed that the root vowel in the
preterites of the mentioned subclasses was short since Proto-Germanic
times, and that it arose from the formerly reduplicated syllable after a shift
of the accentuation from the elided root to the reduplicating syllable. The
diphthongisation is then traced back to multiple causes. A first,
phonological diphthongisation took place in words with word-initial /h/,
affecting class VII preterites too (helt, hekk). This initial diphthongisation
caused the spreading of the diphthong [je] from other VII class strong
preterites (hét, grét), which had diphthongised because of etymological long
vowel. In the modern language, preterite plural forms directly derived from
forms with a short vowel are still observable, as they show a different kind
of diphthongisation to [ei] (fengum, gengum). The preterites of the second
subclass (snera, rera, etc.) adopt the diphthong much later, perhaps as late as
the 18th century, as a result of their reanalysis as weak verbs, and the
neutralisation of the opposition of quantity in the present stem.

1
Table of Contents

1. Introduction …................................................................................... 4
2. The Old Icelandic Vowel System ….................................................. 7
3. On Reduplication …......................................................................... 11
4. Views on the Rise of VII Class Strong Preterites …................ …... 17
5. On */ē2/ and the Spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic …...............…... 21
6. The Orthography of the Earliest Manuscripts …............................ 27
6.1 Introduction …............................................................................ 27
6.2 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts: Larsson (1981) ….............. 31
6.3 Holm perg 15 4to ….................................................................... 33
6.4 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts: Holtsmark (1955) …..... 36
6.5 NRA 52 …................................................................................... 38
6.6 GKS 2087 4to ….......................................................................... 38
6.7 AM 519a 4° ….............................................................................. 40
6.8 AM 132 fol ….............................................................................. 41
6.9 Summary …................................................................................. 43
7. Conclusions ….................................................................................. 44
8. Bibliography …................................................................................. 48

2
List of Abbreviations

Go. = Gothic
Icel. = Icelandic
IPA = International Phonetic Alphabet
OE = Old English
OFris. = Old Frisian
ON = Old Norse
OS = Old Saxon
OHG = Old High German
PIE = Proto-Indo-European

3
 Ru̇nar heita geltir, en rúnar málstafir.

First Grammatical Treatise 86:16

1. Introduction

The so-called seventh class of strong verbs is a well known puzzle within
Germanic linguistic research. The preterite of these verbs evolved from
Proto-Germanic, where all strong verbs were once reduplicated,1 to the
attested daughter languages, where, with the notable exception of Gothic
(the only instance of reduplication being a synchronically analysable
phenomenon), very few traces of reduplication are recorded, and different
preterite patterns are found instead. Some of them present a vowel
alternation which could be synchronically explained as a divergent kind of
ablaut, some others feature what could either be infixation or the result of a
contraction of the root and the ancient reduplicating syllable. Such verbs are
attested in all early Germanic languages, the best attested ones being
Gothic, Old Norse, Old English, Old High German, Old Saxon, and Old
Frisian, although it is evident that at the time of the attestation,
reduplication was being abandoned for good as a regular way of forming
the preterite.

Old Norse retains a handful of interesting instances of formerly

reduplicated preterites. The verbs examined here constitute an important
part of the core common Germanic vocabulary preserved in Old Norse, and
show an interesting mixture of archaic traits and innovations. The main
difficulty for the linguist attempting to trace the development of these

1
See Bammesberger 1994:15ff, Jasanoff 2003:168 ff.

4
forms is their great variety of patterns within a fairly small verb class. The
following six structurally defined subclasses have traditionally been
presented for classical early 13th-century Icelandic (see for instance Noreen
1970:337-339 for the subdivision, subclass VIIe only entry blóta is most of
the times grouped with VIId; the glosses are reported as according to
Cleasby-Vigfússon 1874):

Table 1. The Old Icelandic VII Class of Strong Verbs

Subclass Vowel Infinitive English 3p. pret. sg. 3p. pret. pl.
Alternation Translation

VII a. /ei/ - /ē/ heita 'be called', hét hétu

'command'
leika 'play' lék léku

VII b. /au/ - /jō/ hlaupa 'run' hljóp hlupu

auka 'add' jók
ausa 'pour' jós josu
höggva 'chop' hjó hjoggu, hjuggu
/ū/ - /jō/ búa 'dwell' bjó bjoggu, bjöggu,
bjuggu

VII c. /a/ - /e/ halda 'hold' helt heldu

falla 'fall' fell fellu
falda 'fold' felt feldu
blanda 'blend' blett blendu
ganga 'walk' gekk gengu
hanga 'hang' hekk hengu
fá (< *fanhaną) 'get' fekk fengu

VII d. /ā/ - /ē/ ráða 'rule' réð réðu

blása 'blow' blés blésu
gráta 'weep' grét grétu
láta 'let' lét létu

VII e. /ō/ - /ē/ blóta 'bleed' blét blétu

VII f. /ū/ - /e/ snúa 'turn' snøra, snera sneru

gnúa 'rub' gnøra, gnera gnøru, gneru
/ō/ - /e/ róa 'row' røra, rera røru, reru
gróa 'grow' grøra, grera grøru, greru
/ā/ - /e/ sá 'sow' søra, sera søru, seru

5
Moreover, Noreen (1923:338-339) lists sveipa (pret. sveip) in subclass VIIa
and mentions two isolated participles, eikinn and aldinn, which could fit
into subclasses VIIa and VIIc respectively. The verb bnúa in VIIf (attested
only in the preterite bnera) may be a variant of gnúa.

From the subdivision above it is clear that all of these preterite singular
forms, except subclass VIIf (sneri, reri, etc.) are monosyllabic, and except
VIIc (helt, fekk, etc.) and again VIIf, all have a long root vowel. This study
will especially focus on these two latter sub-classes, as in the course of the
14th century for subclass VIIc, and after the 16th century for subclass VIIf,
the root vowel in the preterite, usually believed to once be have been short,
surfaces as a diphthong, written <ie>, just as if it had come from a long
vowel (/ē/). The effects of such sound change are still very well observable
in modern Icelandic, where the spelling <é> reflects a [je]/[je:]
pronunciation. The dynamics according to which this unusual
diphthongisation took place are still unknown, and such lack of knowledge
constitutes a major obstacle towards understanding the actual development
of this class of verbs into modern Icelandic.

As it will be shown, vowel length is not indicated systematically in Old

Icelandic written sources. That the vowel system was internally distinctively
divided by the feature of length, seems to have been well known even to
early 12th-century Icelanders, as clearly confirmed by the First Grammatical
Treatise (see below). Individual scribes, however, may oftentimes fail to
mark vowel length, by avoiding it completely or applying it inconsistently.
Moreover, contamination among divergent scribal practices and
interpolation of manuscripts during various stages of the tradition may
obscure the picture presented by the orthography even further. Before
tackling the problem of the orthography, a few considerations about the

6
historical development of the Old Icelandic vowel system and reduplication
are to be made.

2. The Old Icelandic Vowel System

Old Icelandic retained an ancient Proto-Indo-European vowel length

pattern, i.e. syllable length could be of three types: light (/VC/), heavy
(/V:C/ or /VC:/), and hyper-characterised (/V:C:/). Vowel length was
originally contrastive and independent from any other variable. The Old
Icelandic vowel system was derived from Proto-Germanic after being
heavily restructured by syncope at a Proto-Norse stage, which re-shaped
vowel length in unstressed syllables and triggered the phonemicisation of
the new vowels arising from umlaut processes, ultimately greatly enlarging
the inherited phoneme inventory (cf. Garnes 1976:196-199 ):

Table 2 - The Proto-Norse Vowel System

SHORT LONG DIPHTHONGS

Front Back Front Back

High i u ī ū eu [ju]
Mid e ē2 ai
Low a ē1 ō au

7
 Table 3. The Common Norse Vowel System after Syncope

SHORT LONG NASAL2 DIPHTHONGS

front back front back front back

High i y u í ý ú ĩ y͂ ũ ey
Mid e ø o é ǿ ó ẽ ø͂ õ ei
Low æ a ǫ ǽ á ǫ́ æ͂ ã ǫ͂ au

Table 4. The 'classical' Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca. 1200)

SHORT LONG DIPHTHONGS

front back front back

High i y u í ý ú ey
Mid e ø o é ǿ ó ei
Low a ǫ ǽ á au

Around the time of the First Grammatical Treatise (mid-12th century), the
vowel system was still divided into three main subsystems, of short, long,
and nasal vowels (table 3). Possibly because the short and long subsystems
were not symmetrical, a significant re-shuffling gradually took place, in
several steps over a long period of time in the history of Old Icelandic, and
eventually the distinctive feature of quantity was eliminated to the benefit
of quality. Firstly, the phonemic distinction between /ø/ and /ǫ/, which
merged into /ö/ (ca. 1200 or shortly thereafter), was neutralised; secondly,
the merger of /æ/ and /ǿ/ into /æ/ took place (ca. 1250); later, long mid and
low vowels became diphthongs, and syllable types were reduced from four

2
According to Hreinn Benediktsson (1972:128-137), there is enough evidence pointing
at fully distinctive nasal correlation at the time of the First Grammatical Treatise.
Being nasality and length superimposable features, a more accurate representation
would have showed a distinction between long and short nasal vowels; however, due
to the complementary distribution which seems to apply to nasal and non-nasal short
vowels and the fact that the nasality correlation was neutralised when long vowels
when a nasal consonant followed, I have opted for a simpler chart showing the nasal
correlation as a third type of vowel correlation, besides length and shortness.

8
to two (i.e. /V:C/ and /VC:/), so that all stressed syllables became heavy.
Whereas in the mid and high vowel subsystems there had nearly always
been a one-to-one correspondence between long and short, the low vowels
rather exhibited an opposition of frontness (note the shift of /á/ from a
central to a back position after the disappearance of /ǫ́/)3. The abandonment
of contrastive vowel length is commonly referred to as the 'Icelandic
Quantity Shift' (Icel. hljóðvalarbreytingin), stretching at least from the 13th to
the 16th century (cf. Björn K. Þórólfsson 1929a, Árnason 1980:121ff and
2005:332ff). Such phenomenon reflects a wider tendency to re-organise a
language's vowel inventory in terms of quantity and emergence of new
diphthongs, which is common to most other old Germanic languages (see
for instance Haugen 1982:24ff on Scandinavian, and Prokosch 1939:107).

The diphthongisation in the late 13th and 14th centuries brought about a
new, in a way less definite dicotomy between unimoric and bimoric vowels,
rather than between long and short vowels, by means of a glide added to the
former long vowels, coming to constitute the reshaped second mora. To the
front vowels, the front semi-vowel /i/ was added (/æ/ [æ:] > [æi̯] > [ai̯]),
while a back semi-vowel /u/ was added to the back vowels (/á/ [a:] > [au̯]).
As early as in the 13th century, however, the new realisation of /é/ [ei̯]4 came
to be confused with the older diphthong /ei/ (e.g., in minimal pairs such as
meir and mér), so that the process was soon reversed to [i̯e] (cf. Hreinn

3
The issue is in fact still open to question, and it is not to be excluded that the merger
of /á/ and /ǫ́/ may have resulted in a round vowel, not affecting its
backness/frontness.
4
Others explain /ei/ as dialectical, as it is apparently not found in Western Iceland
(Noreen 1923:95). However, considering that all new diphthongs are descending,
with [je] being the only exception, the descending [ei] could have well been its
predecessor. Unclear is the development of /æ/ into [ai]; if the early spelling <iæ>
reflects an ascending diphthong, the phoneme might have undergone the opposite
change, i.e. from ascending to descending. But again, that might be a regional variant
from Northern Iceland and, in part, Breiðafjörður (Árnason 2005:333).

9
Benediktsson 1959:298 and Kristján Árnason 2005:333). It follows that the
glide must have been originally added to the high vowels as well, to which it
was identical in quantity; the result was very close to the original value of
the former long vowels: [i:] ~ [ii̯], [u:] ~ [uu̯]. Although it has never been
proposed before, in fact, it is not to be excluded that the glide spread from
the high vowels down to the low vowels, implying a reanalysis of the
constituents of the two morae (cf. Table 5). Down to the modern language,
former mid and low long vowels are best analysed as a sequence of two
separate phonemes (especially [je], as /j/+/e/), while the high vowels
(including /y/ and /ý/, which eventually merged with /i/, from a certain
point on lost any bimoric manifestation.

Table 5. The Late Old Icelandic Vowel System (ca. 1200-1500)

UNIMORIC BIMORIC DIPHTHONGS PROPER

front back front back

High i y u í [ii̯] ú [uu̯] ey

Mid e ö o é [ei̯]>[i̯e] ó [ou̯] ei
Low a æ [ai̯] á [au̯] au

Such transformations are indeed very complex and as one can expect, took a
considerable amount of time to become established both in the spoken and,
by reflex, in the written language. The only way to determine how the
changes took place is thorough a orthographic investigation, not forgetting
that the manuscripts preserved are mostly neither consistent, nor do they
always represent a single phase of the history of the language they are
written in. Nevertheless, as will be confirmed later in greater details, the
data just examined above show a clear tendency towards the replacement of
length as a distinctive feature by quality, possibly as early as the 13th
century, and lasting until the 16th century. Garnes (1976:198) defines the

10
Quantity Shift as “an increase of the scope of the suprasegmental feature
quantity”, meaning that, before the shift, “the scope of the quantity was the
segment, whereas in the post-quantity shift period, the scope was the
syllable”.

3. On Reduplication

Reduplication originates in Proto-Indo-European as a morphological tool

to form the perfect. The perfect denoted a stative aspect, meaning that it
expressed a state resulting from the completion of an action, and was
characterised by e-reduplication, plus mainly */o/ : zero apophony, plus
special endings partly recalling those of the middle, and hysterokinetic
accentuation (Jasanoff 2003:30 and 2007:242). Later, the Proto-Indo-
European (active) perfect became a simple past tense in Germanic and was
further specialised, to the point that all strong Germanic preterites must
once have been reduplicated. Later on, however, except for subclass VIIf,
there are no clear vestiges of reduplication in Old Norse and most of its
relatives, making the loss of this peculiar and once very productive
morphological feature one the most important innovations in the early
history of the Germanic languages.

The next steps were the rise of a formal dichotomy between reduplication
and ablaut, formerly superimposable features, as two concurring
alternatives for forming the preterite. The reduplicating syllable was not
stressed in the Proto-Indo-European perfect, and it is generally assumed
that it never was in Proto-Germanic either (Ringe 2007:191). Because of the
accent lying on the root vowel, one might expect Verner's Law to have
voiced root-initial fricatives in those stems that were still reduplicating; sure
instances of that are very few (e.g. ON sera '(s)he sowed', Go. gasaízlep

11
'(s)he had fallen asleep'), but of a particular relevance, since their reanalysis
gave rise to a -Vr- infix which, according to some, was extended to a good
number of other stems in Old Norse (where sera alone gave birth to
subclass VIIf) and Old High German. Since the voicing /s/ > /z/ is the only
example of Verner's Law in class VII verbs, it may be concluded that other
alternations of root-initial fricatives had already been levelled in Proto-
Germanic (Ringe 2007:191-192).

The main difference between reduplication in Gothic and Northwest

Germanic is the treatment of the initial clusters. Obstruent + sonorant
clusters reduplicate in Gothic with the obstruent only (cf. slepan ~ saíslep,
fraisan ~ faífrais), while NWGmc retains the cluster initially but simplifies
it medially (cf. ON grera, OE -dreord, OHG pleruzzun). However, Gothic
does not entirely reflect the Proto-Germanic situation. Gothic innovates
from Proto-Germanic in the following aspects: a) neutralisation of Verner's
Law's effects (with few exceptions), b) weak plural (and dual) stem forms
are levelled in favour of the singular, and c) generalisation of -ai- [ɛ] at the
expense of -i- (cf. Jasanoff 2007:244).

While most preterite roots are believed to have somehow been re-shaped by
contraction with the reduplicating syllable, there is a subgroup which may
simply have dropped it. The reason for this development was that the roots
were already ablauting, so that the reduplicating syllable became redundant
as a mark for the past tense. There are at least eight such verbs which
retained both reduplication and ablaut, possibly until a late stage in Proto-
Germanic:

*blēsaną 'blow' ~ *beblōs

*grētaną 'weep' ~ *gegrōt
*hwētaną 'push continuously' ~ *hehwōt

12
 *lētaną 'let' ~ *lelōt 'let'
*rēdaną 'rule'~ *rerōd 'rule'
*tēkaną 'take' ~ *tetōk 'take'
*sēaną 'sow' ~ *sezō
*wēaną 'blow (of wind)' ~ *wewō

Ringe (2007:250) hints at more strong verbs with root-internal */ē/ which
are attested elsewhere in the Germanic family tree. Some of those did
probably not ablaut, like *slēpaną ~ *sezlēp. Only two of these verbs surely
kept the original o-vocalism in the preterite unaltered. In Old Norse, a
considerable part of them migrated into other classes or were relocated
within class VII: *wēaną fell out of use, *sēaną remained basically
unchanged but was relocated with the non-ablauting *rōaną to form
subclass VIIf; *tēkaną and *hwētaną, which meanwhile both developed a
short instead of a long a-vocalism in the infinitive as taka, became the
former a simple class VI strong verb; as to *hwētaną, it apparently surfaces
as a weak verb5. Last but not least, the remaining preterites changed their
root vocalism from */ō/ to /ē/ but not without leaving traces in Old
Swedish lót and, of course, *sezō which re-emerged after the syncope as a
reanalysed sera with regressed accentuation (Ringe 2007:249).

The developments which led to the 'new' VII class of strong verbs can be
now summarised as follows:

a) rise of a new, generalised ē-vocalism (of unclear origins) marking the

preterite tense and applying to subclasses VIIa, VIId, and VIIe;

5
The attestation of *hwētaną is problematic. It is found both as the weak verbs hvata
and hvota in Old Icelandic, where hvota (seemingly from *hváta?) seems to regularly
derive from *hwētaną, and is probably related to the other weak verb hóta ('to hold
forth with threatening gestures'), which probably merged with older hǿta ('to
threaten'); the form hvata seems to suggest a development similar to taka (cf. Ringe
2007:249, Cleasby/Vigfússon 1957:297 and 281).

13
 b) tendency toward monosyllabic preterites matching the present forms,
and consequently,
c) elimination of either the reduplicating syllable or the root syllable in
the above subclasses (see chapter 4);
d) in subclass VIIb, especially when the root started with a vowel, a kind
of contraction took place, at the same time re-modelling the new ō-
vocalism to a pattern close, if not identical, to class VI preterites (the
migration of taka to class VI confirms the analogy);
e) subclass VIIf would then work as a 'waste bin' for orphaned forms,
which because of their inner structure, fully retained reduplication,
but of which only sera did originally ablaut; the last vowel was then
easily reanalysed as a weak ending -a analogous to -ða;
f) the verbum puro *būaną did not join subclass VIIf in most Germanic
languages (unlike Old High German birun) and was relocated to
subclass VIIb after undergoing contraction: */būaną/ ~ */beƀ/ >
*/bew/ > */beū/ > bjó (plural forms would then be analogical
according to the VIIb alternation).

The question that needs to be answered before dealing with the

reconstruction of class VII strong preterites is whether the root vowel was
long or short. This is the case for especially subclass VIIc preterites, since
even when their development is satisfactorily explained, the results are
often hardly applicable to the remaining subclasses. In Proto-Germanic,
subclass VIIc verbs used to form the preterite in roughly the same way as
subclass VIIa verbs, so they are expected to behave in a similar way even
after the reduplication period. And yet their development is different, as
they do not seem to be drawn (yet) towards the newly created ē-grade. It
has been maintained that the reason for this is to be sought in their inner
structure (see chapter 4). Their distinctive features are the following:

14
 a) their default (present) root structure is /CaRC/, rather than
/CeiC/;
b) the final consonant was originally voiced, and if it is not a
resonant, it is later devoiced, and if there is an adjacent nasal, it is
assimilated;
c) at times, not only the quantity but also the quality of the root
vowel fluctuates between /e/ and /i/ in Old Norse (/i/ in East Norse,
/e/ in West Norse, although /i/ is sometimes found as a variant in
Old Icelandic: cf. Chapter 6, section on Möðruvallabók), Old Saxon
and Old Frisian.

An overview of the preterite singular forms is given below in table 6 (cf.

Fulk 1987:169-172, Torp 1909, Katara 1939 for Old Saxon, Steller 1928 and
Bremmer 2009 for Old Frisian):

Table 6. Comparative Overview of Subclass VIIc Preterite Singular Forms

ON OHG OS OE OFris. Go.

held hialt held hēold hēld/hīld haíhald
felt fialt feld fēold ? faífald
fekk fiang feng fēng feng/fing faífāh
hekk hiang heng hēng heng/hweng haíhāh
gekk giang geng gēong geng/ging (*gaígagg)
fell fial fell/fēl fēoll fol faífal

Old High German shows a clear long vowel since its earliest period (/ē/,
later /ia/ and then /ie/), alongside Old English, where it is more
problematic to trace back the original vowel length, but it seems, however,
that the given diphthongs probably came from long vowels (Fulk 1987:171).
As shown in the table, in both Old English and Old High German the VIIc-

15
type has been absorbed into another type, characterised by a long vowel in
the preterite. In Old English it merged with the b-type, which was
productive and serving as a box for verbs with divergent vocalisms; in Old
High German it merged with the a-type, acquiring thus the diphthong /ia/
in the preterite. Through this process, the anomaly of a short vowel in class
VII was soon obliterated in West Germanic (Jörundur Hilmarson 1991:38-
39), with the notable exceptions of the manuscripts of the so-called Isidore
Group and the Monsee-Wiener fragments (Braune 1967:286-287), and Old
Saxon. The latter shows chiefly a short vowel, being thus all in all identical
to Old Icelandic. The vowel can occasionally be lengthened or
diphthongised before a simple consonant, like in fell > fel > fēl, but it
definitely appears to be a later minor innovation. The evidence for Old
Frisian is somewhat less clear, due to an extensive reshuffling of the vowel
system, although a short vowel seems to dominate.

Postulating an early long vowel in all Northwest Germanic remains an

option, but has further implications. Old Icelandic is not the anomaly: the
diphthongisation /e/ > /ei/ > /ie/ which seems to affect some of subclass
VIIc preterites is found not only in Old Icelandic but remarkably also in
Old Saxon and Old Frisian sources, in apparently the same instances.
Particularly in the oldest Old Saxon attestations (the manuscripts of the
Heliand), the root vowel in class VIIc is nearly always noted as short, and
fluctuates between /e/ and /i/ (as in geng/ging), whereas the latter phoneme
is stabilised in East Norse at about the same time. In late Old Saxon it also
starts appearing as <ee>, <ei>, <ey>, and in those words containing /i/, as
<ie>, and later into Middle Low German, it monophthongises to <ee> (cf.
Katara 1939:114). There is no apparent reason for the fluctuation /e/~/i/ to
be dependent on a long vowel, or, even less plausibly, to be a 'reflex' of
Proto-Germanic */ē2/ (as it is often claimed, among others, by Fulk

16
1987:171), and why Old English and Old High Germans should not have
been the innovators. In fact, the situation looks rather like the preservation
of an archaism, which has later been analogically levelled. There is, in short,
no need of postulating a long chain of lengthenings and shortenings, in
order to explain why Old Norse was different from the rest rather the other
way around. In the following chapter, theories on the formation of class VII
preterites will be examined more specifically.

4. Views on the rise of VII class strong preterites

Traditional handbooks of Old Norse grammar display different and at

times inconsistent views on the development of reduplicating verbs. In one
of his early works, Adolf Noreen (1913:205) delineates a twofold pattern,
following a tradition which had started already with Grimm:

a) *fefall > *ffall > ON fal(l), from inf. falla;

b) *hehald > *hēalt > ON hélt, from inf. halda

Noreen believed that two different changes occurred within subclass VIIc,
and that pattern b) was later generalised to a), which originally retained the
root vowel quality due to the intervening fricative. As a consequence of such
analogical change, most subclass VIIc preterites would then have had a long
vowel from the beginning, resulting partly from a compensatory
lengthening (*hehald > *hēalt), which later causes a contraction of the root
vowel with the one in reduplicating syllable, and partly on analogy. The
diphthongisation in Icelandic would then be due to the long monophthongs,
whereas in subclass VIIf the root vowel was lengthened because in an open

17
syllable (sneri > snéri). Those forms which were not subject to this change
underwent analogical change (*fall > féll).

Heusler (1950:92-93) produced a much more modern-looking picture, with

a short vowel in all subclass VIIc preterites. He argued that “das nord. fell
verlangt keine Vorstufe *fēll”. His intention was possibly to criticise the
common idea that a long vowel had arise from contraction or secondary
lengthening, and then later been shortened, as in Boer (1920:191): “De e is
door verkorting uit ē (ē₂) ontstaan”.

An outdated approach that for a time met with widespread approval was a
phono-morphological, ablaut-based derivation, once popular among the
Neogrammarians. This has later turned out not to be a feasible approach,
especially after the advent of the laryngeal theory. An epitome of this school
is Van Coetsem (1956). Van Coetsem pointed out that pure reduplication as
in haíhait is exclusively found in Gothic, while Northwest Germanic
developed its own VII-class ablaut grades. In his scenario, subclasses VIIa
(present root vocalism */ai/) and VIId (present root vowel */ē1/) had
originally developed the same “augmented grade” */ei/ in the preterite;
later, this newly formed diphthong */ei/ monophthongised to */ē2/, pushed
by the development */ai/ > */ei/ in the infinitive. Subclass VIIc fits nicely
in: to the reconstructed alternation */ai/ ~ */ei/ and similarly, in VIIb */au/
~ */eu/ (> */jō/), corresponds the simpler */a/ ~ */e/. This kind of
alternation has also been called 'reversed ablaut' (Ablaut in umgekehrte
Richtung) due to the mirrored image of the Proto-Indo-European */e/ ~
*/a/ ablaut alternation. This theory still has much to recommend it,
especially because by acknowledging an original short /e/ in subclass VIIc
preterites, the overall picture becomes simpler.

18
However, the approach which eventually has had most success is strictly
phonological. In short, it is a theory of contraction of the formerly
reduplicating syllable and the root syllable, similar to the one formulated by
Noreen and discussed above. Contraction generates a new kind of root
vocalism that is ultimately reanalysed as a new ablaut type. Scholars do not
agree on the exact details of the contraction, and presently divide between
those advocating a mixture of syncope and compensatory lengthening,
infixation, “compression” and haplology.

Voyles (1992:73) explains how “one of the ways class VII strong verbs
formed the past was to insert stressed /e/ into the present-tense stem”.
Although subclass VIIc is not specifically discussed, one can assume that
Voyles believes Old Norse helt to have been /hēlt/ since the beginning, and
having developed from *hald > *heald > *healt > *hēlt. Voyles does not
produce any real sound law to explain the change */ea/ > /ē/, only that “the
new diphthong /eē/ in forms like /leēt/ 'let' was interpreted quite naturally,
as /ē/”, and so “similarly, the new diphthong /ea/ […] was also interpreted as
/ē/”. Even though most of this is actually in line with earlier theories, such
developments are in fact highly implausible, and not supported by any
actual orthographic evidence (i.e., the Old Icelandic written sources indicate
that subclass VIIc verbs had a short root vowel in the preterite, as will be
discussed below). It is also likely that some stage of this process assumed by
Voyles and the Old Norse breaking were overlapping at some point in
North Germanic, and given the similarity between a hypothetical
diphthong */ea/ in the preterite stem and the first stage of breaking (*/e/
> /ea/ > /ja/) one would rather expect the development */ea/ > /ja/ as in
the breaking environment. Arguably, this was most probably the context
from which the preterite jók arose from *eauk.

19
Another kind of infixation theory has been proposed by Vennemann
(1994). According to Vennemann, the different root syllables in
reduplicated forms, typically made up of a fricative and a vowel, were first
generalised to -zV- and later rhotacised to -rV-. Later, the root vowel was
syncopated and stress was stabilised on the reduplicating syllable, somehow
opening the way for the elision of -r-, which triggered a compensatory
lengthening of the stress-bearing vowel. Vennemann assumes therefore that
subclass VIIc preterites got a long vowel at an early stage. The assumption
that there ever was a stress regression from the root to the reduplicating
syllable appears to be peculiar of Vennemann’s theory (1994:306-307).

Vennemann’s theory has been firmly criticised by Jasanoff (2007), who also
notably claims that most of Vennemann’s sound laws have been produced
ad hoc. Jasanoff maintains that the word-initial (i.e. radical) stress was
established on a Proto-Germanic level, thus including Gothic as well, and
that long vowels were not shortened in unstressed position in either North
and West Germanic, concluding therefore that “there is no way, in short,
that the position of the accent could have been a determining factor in the
restructuring of reduplication in Northwest Germanic” (Jasanoff 2007:257).
Instead, he reformulates the contraction theory into a new-looking
“compression” theory, where disyllabic preterite plural forms were made
monosyllabic through the “ejection” of the root vowel first in the preterite
plural; the consequent cluster was then simplified, and the new vowel
alternations were reanalysed as ablaut. As a necessary criticism, it should be
noted that Jasanoff does not clarifies how the “ejection” could have taken
place without the regression of the stress from the root to the reduplicating
syllable, however.

20
5. On */ē2/ and the spreading of [je] in Old Icelandic

Class VII preterites such as hét and réð are usually reconstructed with
Proto-Germanic */ē2/, a late phoneme resulting from the lengthening of
short */e/ and distinct from Proto-Germanic primary */ē/ (or */ē¹/ < PIE
*/ē/). There can be little doubt that in order to be two different phonemes,
*/ē¹/ and */ē2/ must have had some more or less marked difference in
quality. Evidence for */ē¹/ being rather a low-spread vowel, perhaps better
noted with */ǣ/, have been convincingly produced by Antonsen (2002:20):

that is evident from its later development to long */ā/ in stressed syllables, from
the lowering influence it has on preceding root vowels, as when
P[roto]G[ermanic] */klibǣnan/ > OHG klebēn, Ger. kleben 'to cleave, to stick',
and from early foreign loanwords in which a foreign long mid-front vowel /ē/ is
borrowed into Germanic as the long high front vowel /ī/ […]. This sound-
substitution in loanwords occurred because there was no corresponding long mid
vowel in Germanic.

According to Jörundur Hilmarson (1991), Proto-Germanic */ē2/ as a

distinctive phoneme is primarily found in the word for 'here', which he
derives from the Proto-Indo-European particle *ḱe (rather than from the
instrumental singular *ḱī), whose */e/ was “emphatically” lengthened, and
to which an analogical -r was added. In addition, Jörundur Hilmarson
assumes that */ē2/ was found in most preterites of class VII strong verbs. It
is also found in some other minor instances, most notably in Latin
loanwords containing /ē/. The phoneme is therefore a Germanic
innovation, and surfaces whenever lengthening occurs.

The attestation of Old Icelandic hér and that of VII class strong preterites
does indeed have some important similarities, which necessitated the

21
inclusion of the adverb in this present study. Jörundur Hilmarson did his
own survey of the orthographic manifestation of her/hér on the Old
Icelandic Book of Homilies Holm. Perg. 15 4to (about 1200). He states
(1991:34):

According to Hreinn Benediktsson (1967/68:32 [in the bibliography of this

present study listed as Hreinn Benediktsson 1967]) over 90% of long vowels in
some of the hands of that manuscript exhibit the length mark. The adverb “here”,
however, when written in full, has a short vowel in all of its 44 occurrences, and
when abbreviated, it is written with a length mark only once out of 39
occurrences. This seems to necessitate the assumption that Old Icelandic
possessed not only the form hér, as usually posited and preserved in Modern
Icelandic, but also the form her with a short vowel […].

This theory clearly casts new light upon the problem of lengthening of */e/
in Old Icelandic. The attested length of the word 'here' fluctuates for a
time, in a fashion that is indeed very similar to some of the preterites of the
VII class of strong verbs, and its occurrence is directly observable in those
sources which are also useful for observing the formerly reduplicating
preterites. Apparently, there are several instances of */ē2/ over a longer time
span, and they are due to multiple sound changes about which very little is
known. According to Jörundur Hilmarsson, (1991:39-40), the sound
changes giving rise to */ē2/ apply to three cases:

• Strong verbs of subclass VIIa: *he-hait- > *hé-hāt- > *het- (haplologic
elision of the root syllable) > *hē2t- (secondary lengthening, analogy
wit the present stem)
• Similarly, in strong verbs of subclass VIId: *le-lē1t- > *lé-lāt- > *let- >
*lē2t-
• *her > *hē2r (emphatic lengthening)

22
Jörundur Hilmarson's theory is not far from Jasanoff's compression theory.
But while Jasanoff still heavily relies on contraction consequent to the
elision of the root vowel, the first employs haplology in order to eliminate
the whole root syllable. While on one hand this could very well apply to
Old Norse, on the other hand limited evidence of cognate vestiges such as
Anglian heht, reord and leort constitute a difficult problem, as they seem to
retain clear traces of the root syllable, which could therefore not have been
elided at once (see for example Jasanoff 2007:245). Moreover, a reasonable
amount of caution is needed when it comes to phenomena such as emphatic
lengthening and, most importantly, haplology: in the latter case, elision by
haplology calls for the assumption that reduplication as a morphological
tool was entirely no longer understood by the users of the language at the
time. The reason for that would not necessarily be that the mechanism had
been made obscure by independent sound changes; although it was clearly
no longer productive, morphological reduplication must have been liable of
being fully analysed as such, but for some reason, it simply was not.

The exact evolution of reduplicating verbs aside, however, there seems to be

an evident limitation with most of the linguistic research discussed above, in
that its focus generally lies on the quantity of the root vowel in the
discussed preterites, and rarely on the diphthongisation which is the actual
recorded phenomenon in several Germanic languages. In Old Icelandic, in
particular, there is enough reason to pay deeper attention at the emergence
of the diphthong [je] in class VII strong verbs, but also in a number of other
cases. These other cases are so relevant that from the time of the Quantity
Shift on, they may even justify analogical transformations within class VII
strong verbs.

The first one which needs to be mentioned here involves /e/ > [je] in words
such as ég, éta, él, héri, hérað, héðan, Héðinn, occurring long before the

23
change had started affecting class VII strong preterites (according to Björn
Karel Þórólfsson 1929b:223, manuscript sources start reading <ie> in such
instances from around 1300). The sound change behind these instances has
been explained in several different ways, and very often as lengthening with
subsequent diphthongisation, whereas both the etymological and
orthographic evidence points at a diphthongisation of a short vowel.
Another popular explanation is that [je] arose by means of a palatalisation or
'j-infix' (cf. discussion by Haukur Þorgeirsson 2009), which in itself is not
very explanatory. Theories of the origin of [je] in ég, éta, etc. often include
class VII strong preterites, while it is evident that we are dealing with not
only two, but more separate phenomena, which however produce the same
result and which possibly triggered analogical transformations. In words
such as hérað, héðan and the personal name Héðinn, for example, the change
/e/ > [je] is triggered by the word-initial /h/, and affects /e/ as from Proto-
Germanic (not resulting from earlier */æ/, from i-mutated short */a/)
(Noreen 1923:95). To class V preterite éta, on the other hand, possibly a
particular analogical change applies, triggered by the preterite singular át
(quite exceptionally, both the singular and the plural preterite forms have a
long vowel, from a lengthened ablaut grade */ē1t-/). Finally, the adverb hér
is most likely one of those words where an initially occasional, prosody-
regulated emphatic lengthening could very well apply, and later become
generalised. These instances, albeit not numerous, are crucial for the
occurrence of the diphthong [je] as they are part of a varied group of highly
frequent lexemes undergoing the same unusual kind of diphthongisation.

Another kind of diphthongisation of short vowels taking place during the

Quantity Shift, this time analogical, affecting shortened vowels in originally
hyper-characterised syllables. This change is limited to the nominal and
adjectival domain, and it is another exception to the rule stating that the

24
exclusive phonetic condition for the diphthongisation was the long duration
of the vowels. Some examples are neuter forms of adjectives such as skjótt,
fljótt, brátt which developed an “underlying diphthong” from an /o/ that
must have been shortened earlier at around 1200 (as in gott ~ góður and
minn ~ mín), because of the evident morphological relationship with their
masculine and feminine equivalents, which all had /ó/ (Kristján Árnason
1980:116-118). According to Kristján Árnason, one could also consider the
shortened long vowels to have been qualitatively different from the original
short ones, so that they could be classified as short allophones of long
vowels (ibid.). It should be however noted that such claims are impossible to
substantiate, i.e. there I no way to find out whether there ever was a
lengthening before the diphthongisation, because the only valuable sorce,
metrics, does not distinguish between long and hyper-characterised
syllables. Clearly, Kristján Árnason excludes that there ever was any
lengthening (1980:118).

Furthermore, there are also quite a few very interesting examples of

neutralisation of the quantity correlation in Old Icelandic, although
affecting very specific instances. In monosyllables where a compensatory
lengthening is usually supposed to have taken place, the vowel is sometimes
apparently noted as short before junctures (notably, in the imperative se þo
vs. séþo '(you) see' and the phrase Goþrøþe vs. góþ rǿþe in the First
Grammatical Treatise, 86:3-5). Hreinn Benediktsson (1972:138) explains
the incongruence as not being an actual shortening, for which there would
be no comparable cases, but rather a case of vowel length being neutralised
to a point in which the vowel segments, in this case taking on the value of
'archiphonemes', were perceived as neither long nor short. This
phenomenon clearly caused fluctuation in pronunciation, with the
possibility that the “actual length was more similar to that of the

25
phonemically short vowels, i.e., of the negative term of the quantity
correlation” (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972:139). The implications of such
observation are manifold, but one in particular is interesting for this present
study: that

a phonemic change has to be interpolated between Old and Modern Icelandic in

order to account for the fact that the 'archiphonemes', in spite of being identified
with the short phonemes in the twelfth century, have later developed in the same
way as the long vowels in positions of distinction (Hreinn Benediktsson
1972:139)

which is to say, they developed a diphthong (/se/ > [sje]) directly from a
situation of seemingly short vocalism, without previously undergoing the
required lengthening. This could definitely account for a further example of
vowel length fluctuation affecting important areas of speech, and
ultimately, of a diphthong sprung from a vowel which, if not surely short,
was somehow perceived to be short and certainly noted as such in certain
manuscript tradition. It profiles itself as a powerful trend, initiated by a
large array of different causes and stretching throughout a considerably long
period of time, and gradually extending to a fairly large portion of the
language well into the modern language.

Hreinn Benediktsson's neutralisation theory becomes very useful when

trying to make sense of the diphthong in the present stem of class V strong
verb éta. Criticism is strong on this point: Sturtevant (1953:457) points out
that if éta is an analogical form, it would be the only example of such
analogy in the verbal system, whereas on the other hand verbs such as vega
~ vá, fregna ~ frá remain unchanged. There are at two main reasons why I
prefer analogy in this particular case. One is that it is harder to demonstrate
how often a verb such as éta would occur in contexts where its vowel was

26
liable to be lengthened due to its initial position, than it is for words such as
ég and hér, i.e., leaving the 'emphatic lengthening' hypothesis and the
obviously non-related case of diphthongisation following word-initial /h/,
little explanatory material is left but plain analogy. The other one answers
the question as to what kind of analogy this may be: taking into account
that preterites of the type of vá and frá are monosyllables ending with their
stem vowel, and were therefore subject to neutralisation of the quantity
correlation, it becomes evident that that is the reason why an analogical
infinitive such as **véga is impossible, whereas the diphthongisation of éta
from non-vowel-final át is. Also, an analogy of the kind gaf : át :: gefa : éta
is not entirely out of the question. Following this track, it should also be
noted that neither the preterites of the verba pura of subclass VIIf (snúa,
róa, gróa, núa, sá, but also the displaced búa) show an unambiguous long
root vowel until late, because in early Old Icelandic, length in their present
stems was likewise neutralised.

6. The Orthography of the Earliest Icelandic Manuscripts

6.1 Introduction

As discussed above, there is some disagreement among scholars concerning

the quantity of the root vowel in subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites
in Old Norse. This calls for an inspection of the available sources, i.e., early
Icelandic manuscripts until the 14th century, in order to shed some light on
the use of the accent mark and other ways of marking length and/or
diphthongisation of /é/. Hreinn Benediktsson (1968:32) and later Kristján
Árnason (1980:101) identified only three Old Icelandic manuscripts
containing the most reliable orthographic manifestation of vowel length, of

27
which only two are of considerable length. These three manuscripts are
Holm perg 15 4to, NRA 52 and GKS 2087 4to (description below), and
here well represented in this present study, but admittedly, they did not
contain many relevant examples, as will become more evident from a closer
glance.

The survey will mainly focus on manuscripts containing prose texts. I the
earliest Icelandic manuscripts, the principal means of denoting vowel length
is by means of the superscript acute accent mark. However, the acute mark
has been employed in West Norse for denoting several further grapho-
phonological features besides vowel length and its usage changes
considerably in time and from scribe to scribe. Some scholars have even
gone as far as saying that the accent mark is not uniformly used as a length
mark in any manuscript (Seip 1954:63). Its most common usages are a)
marking a word's primary stress, especially in words of foreign origin; b) as
a diacritic for marking vowels, especially on <i> and <y> (also noted as
<ij>) for better distinguishing them from nearby strokes (ultimately
evolving into the dots over /i/ and /j/); c) as a double mark on two adjacent
vowels, it serves as diaeresis (cf. Noreen 1913:§33). Other notable practices
are d) marking monosyllables such as á, í, ór, ǫ́n, etc., evidently in order not
to confuse them with parts of nearby longer words (however, the same
monosyllables are elsewhere often never marked when long, unlike long
vowels in other contexts); e) marking vowel quality, rather than quantity, as
in <ó> for /ǫ/ or /ø/ and <é> for /ę/. (Seip 1954:63)

In spite of this, it is generally accepted that a primary function of the acute

mark is a quantitative one, i.e. of marking vowel length, especially as a
scribal practice which gets established over time. According to Lindblad
(1952:133-138), it is in the so-called classical period (ca 1150-1350) that the

28
length-marking practice is best exemplified, reaching peaks of 90% (GKS
2087 4to), while starting around 1250 and throughout the 14 th century this
practice yields gradually to the graphical function, with a transitional period
stretching roughly from 1300 to 1350. Notably, in spite of the great
similarities with the various usages of the accent mark in Anglo-Saxon and
Norwegian written sources, the exclusive and consequent employment of
the acute as a length mark is a unique feature of Old Icelandic script, with
potential parallels only in Old Irish script (Lindblad 1952:10-11).

The reasons for this uniqueness may perhaps be sought in the role which
the First Grammatical Treatise is believed to have played in early Icelandic
scriptoria as a (or perhaps even the) normative text for apprentice scribes,
until younger, more influential fashions from continental Europe gradually
made their way to Iceland. The anonymous author of the First Grammatical
Treatise recommends the use of a 'stroke' for marking length (“merkja ina
lǫngu með stryki frá inum skǫmmum”, 86:2-3, cf. translation in Hreinn
Benediktsson 1972:218-21), because he finds it more economic than the
solution employed by one of his models, the Greek script, which uses
separate graphemes for long vowels. He is well aware of the fact that if he
were to devise a separate 'letter' (stafr) for each of the units he is trying to
make order with, he would get an alphabet of sixty-four units (thirty-six
vowels and twenty-eight consonants). Nonetheless, he still wants to show
the distinction, because “hon skiftir máli” (86:2). Because of the lack of
parallels at the time (except maybe for Irish scriptoria), and possibly because
of the hint suggesting that the author had especially Greek in mind, it is
sensible to assume that the usage of the accent mark was his original idea,
just as the superscript dot denoting nasality, among other innovations.

The influence of the First Grammatical Treatise, however, if it ever was

that great, does indeed fade away quite soon, as Icelandic scribes become

29
more skilled and experienced. Generally, most of the early Old Icelandic
manuscripts make no graphic distinction between long and short vowels,
because the traditional Latin orthography lacked this distinction, as well as
for nasal and non-nasal vowels. However, the First Grammatical Treatise
testifies to a great level of linguistic awareness of an author or, possibly, a
small group of literate 12th-century Icelanders, but since it was probably
written long before any extant manuscript, it is hard to establish how great
its influence really was at the time. It is for instance possible that a 'norm'
like that of the length mark was but a recommendation which did not gain
widespread acceptance; in other words, marking vowel length was good
practice in those cases where not doing it would have made the reading
harder (which does only rarely occur).

In fact, early manuscripts totally lacking length mark are not rare (cf.
Lindblad 1952:28ff). AM 237 a fol, for example, dated to the mid-12th
century, shows 5 times <é>, and 4 of the instances are the word verk which
has etymological short vowel and does not later diphthongise). Rímbegla
(GKS 1812 4to A) has <é> standing for /ę/, just like <ó> stands for /ǫ/. On
the other hand, there is a good number of sources where the length mark is
used selectively and according to an inner logic; for example, it may be
systematically avoided on prepositions, adverbs, and other non-nominal and
non-verbal monosyllables, but nonetheless, its notation elsewhere can be
extremely precise, although the statistics will not account for that.

It is therefore necessary in this present study to examine in details the

graphemic representation of subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites in Old
Icelandic. Within monographs dealing specifically with single manuscripts
and in other orthographic-statistical surveys, it is not uncommon to
encounter statements of the kind “<é> appears in N instances of
etymological short vowel”, where it is hard to understand whether the

30
author thinks that the preterites of subclasses VIIc and VIIf and related
cases originally had originally a short vowel or not.

6.2 The earliest Icelandic Manuscripts: Larsson (1981)

Already from a first glance into a reference work on Old Icelandic lexicon
in the earliest manuscripts, it appears clear that where the length mark
occurs less often than it should when denoting length, it is hardly used for
subclasses VIIc and VIIf preterites, and almost never with the adverb hér.
For a comparison, the table presented below also shows the figures for the
commonest class VII verb, heita. It should also be mentioned that the
number of preterites which are attested in the first place is not as much as
desirable. The following information is found in Larsson's lexicon (1891),
including the following manuscripts: AM 237 folio, (abbr. 237); Rímbegla
GKS 1812 4to (abbr. Rb); Icelandic Homily Book (Holm. Perg. 4to no.15,
abbr. H); Physiologus Fragments (I, II and III, abbr. Ph I, II, III in AM 673
4to A); AM 645 4to (abbr. 645); Elucidarius (AM 674 4to A, abbr. El);
Placitusdrápa (AM 673 4to B, abbr. Pl); Grágás (AM 315 folio D, abbr.
Grg).

31
 Table 7. Orthography of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and hér in
Larsson (1891).

237 Rb H Ph I Ph II Ph III 645 El Pl Grg

VIIa) HEITA 1sg hét

3sg hét hét (29), het (5) het hét (44), het hét, het
(8), hét, het hétt
(15), heít
3pl héto (2), heto héto (6)

VIIc) FÁ 1sg fecc, fek fec

2sg fect
3sg feck (2), fek (7) fek fek(8), fec (4), fecc fecc
fexk

FALLA 3sg fell (12) fell (31), fell

(2)

GANGA 1sg gek gek, gec

3sg geck (4), geck (7), gek (8) geck gek (26), gec gek geck,
gekc, gec (2) (16), gecſc gek

HALDA 3sg helt helt (2), hellt (3), hélt, helt (4) helt helt,
hellz hellt

HANGA 3sg heck (3), hek (3) hek, hec

VIIf) SÁ 3sg ſøre, ſére

SNÚA 3sg ſneore (2), ſnere (2),

ſneoreſc, ſnøreſc ſnereſc (2),
(2) ſneriſc
3pl ſnǿroſc ſnero (2),
ſneroſc

Adv. HÉR her her, her (44). her (38), her her (3), her her her her
her, hér (2), (16) (3), (3)
hér her her
(2),
hér

In the whole corpus of manuscripts, a subclass VIIc preterite is spelled only

once with <é> (<hélt> in AM 645 4to), while the same word occurs four
other times in the same manuscript and in the same mood, tense and
person, with <e>. Class VIIa preterites, on the other hand, are
overwhelmingly spelled with <é>, as exemplified by heita: the ratio
between <hét> and <het> is 67.8% against 16.6%6. There is also one

6
The remaining spellings of /ht/ (besides <heít>) in AM 645 4to are abbreviated and
are here believed to be less relevant for this kind of statistics.

32
instance of a subclass VIIf preterite written with an accent mark,
<ſnǿroſc>, which seems to be one of those cases, as in <hélt>, where the
accent mark may be superfluous, given the very low attestation of subclass
VIIf preterites with accent mark. Notably, among all manuscripts there are
only three instances of <hér> (of which one is actually <h́͛>, in Holm Perg.
15 4to, see below).

6.3 Holm perg 15 4to

One of the most ancient and best known Old Icelandic manuscript is the
so-called Icelandic Homily Book (Homilíubók, Holm perg 15 4°), dated to
about 1200. Given its considerable size (102 pages), it represents an
extraordinary source of information about Old Icelandic language and
scribal practices. It has been argued that if follows to some extent the
orthographical rules given by the First Grammatical Treatise, to the extent
that even (albeit few) nasal vowels are marked (de Leeuw van Weenen
2004:4 and 60-61). There is traditionally little agreement on the number of
hands in the manuscript, but the idea that the whole manuscript could have
been written either by one hand over a long period of time or by several
scribes all writing the same hand has been lately gaining more and more
popularity among the experts of this particular manuscript (de Leeuw van
Weenen 2004:34). In short, thus, the handwriting does vary considerably,
but it is unclear whether this is to be traced back to the intervention of
several hands, rather than to the will of being as close as possible, even in
the layout, to the parent manuscript(s), or, more simply, to a considerable
time span between the writing of its single parts.

Hreinn Benediktsson (1967:33) wrote about the occurrence of the length

mark, that it ranges from an average percentage of accuracy as high as 84.9

33
up to 96.8 for almost all hands, with the only notable exception of the hand
called 'i', exhibiting a meager 55.7%. In fact, differences within the
manuscripts can be substantial, and spelling can vary considerably.
According to Lindblad (1952:59-61), the cases where an accent mark is
placed on an indisputably short vowel are 150, which represents a frequency
of about 0.25-0.3%. In the most recent edition of the ms, de Leeuw van
Weenen (2004:58) estimates that the spelling <e> for /é/ surpasses <é>,
and other alternative spellings fill in the scenario as well, as /é/ occurs a few
times as <ę> or <æ> or <ei>. Now, these latter spellings are certainly
more valuable for the present research than plain <e>, as both <æ> and
<ei> could perhaps say something about the early stage of diphthongisation
of /é/ into [je] though [ej] / [eⁱ] / [æi] or a similar intermediate stage.

The hand division showed in the table below is the one used by Andrea de
Leeuw van Weenen (2004), which is a sort of compromise among several
others and not differing too much from them. As shown in the table,
orthographical practices fluctuate considerably even within the same hands.
Hand 'c' in particular is inconsistent in the following points:

a) consonant gemination: /k:/ is written either <k> or <ck>, /l:(C)/

either <ll>, <l> or <>;
b) the spelling of the preterite of heita, with 5 times <e> vs. 5 times
<é>, and this is about all of occurrences of <het>;
c) most notably, the spelling of subclass VIIf preterites.

In this last case, the normal root vowel is short /ø/, spelled either <ø> or
<eo>, but hand 'c' spells <ſére> (one instance), which could suggest a long
derounded vowel, and elsewhere the medio-passive <ſnøreſc>, while none
of subclass VIIc preterites bear an acute mark. From the point of view of
historical phonology, there can be no doubt that all cases of r-umlaut in this

34
kind of preterites had a short /ø/ and never a long one, because its normal
development into modern Icelandic would have then been **/snæri/
['snairɪ], rather than /snéri/ ['snjerɪ]. Hand 'q' spells <ſnereſc>, but also
always <hét> without exceptions. Given all other spellings elsewhere in the
manuscript, it is therefore unlikely that <ſére> indicates a long vowel.
Hand 'i' is the only one marking a VIIc preterite, but at the same time
spelling <fell> and <hetoþ>, and it must therefore be deemed unreliable. I
would thus draw the following conclusions about the manuscript:

• the normal vocalism in VIIc preterites is short /e/, in VIIf short /ø/
with some instances of derounding to /e/;
• the word 'here', when not abbreviated, appears nearly always as
<her> (37 times) and only once as <h́͛> 73v22 (whereas Larsson
reported 44, see table above);
• the vocalism of VIIa preterites is /é/, as the acute mark surpasses by
far the instances where it is absent;
• it is possible that the spelling <héito> 47v12 notes some kind of
diphthongisation of /ē/ > [ei], although it only occurs in one instance.

35
 Table 10. Orthography of subclasses VIIa, VIIc and VIIf strong preterites
divided by scribal hands in Hom perg 15 4°, as according to de Leeuw van
Weenen (2000).

Hand VII c VII f VII a

FÁ FALLA GANGA HALDA HANGA SÁ SNÚA HEITA

a 1r, 1v28-40 ge

b 1v1-27 hét
c 2r-40v27 fek (3), fe, fell geck (4) hellt (2), heck (3), ſére ſnøreſc het (4), hét
feck (2) helt hek (5), heto
d 40v27-42v
e 43r-44v fell
f 45r-50v4, 61v- geck hét, héito
62v24
g 50v5-54r hét
h 54v-56v
i 57r-61r fék fell hetoþ
k 62v25-65v18 fe (2) hét, héto
l 65v19-66v, 69r ſøre
m 67r-68v
n 69v-77v fe gec he ſnøroſc
o 78r-80v3 ge (3) hét (3)
p 80v4-35, 94r19- fecc fell (5) Ge, ge het, helt ſneoeſc het, hét (11),
97r héto
q 81r-94r19 fe ge, geck het he ſnereſc hét (8)
r 97v-102v fell (2) ge (2) hétō

6.4 The earliest Norwegian Manuscripts: Holtsmark (1955)

A comparison can be made within West Norse with the oldest Norwegian
manuscripts until ca. 1250. The following table, based on Holtsmark
(1955), contains the following manuscripts:

• Norwegian Homily Book I, II, III, (AM 619 4to, abbr. Hom I, II,
III);
• AM 655 IX 4to (abbr. 655 IX);
• Ólafs saga Tryggvasonar (in De la Gardie 4-7 fol., abbr. OT);
• Norske Diplomer (in Norsk Riksarkiv, abbr. ND)

36
 Table 8. Orthography of of subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites and hér in
early Old Norwegian manuscripts according to Holtsmark (1955)

Hom I Hom II Hom III 655 IX OT ND I : 51

VIIC) FÁ 3sg fecc (5), fec ecc (3)

(7)

FALLA 3sg fell (11), fel ell (4), æl ell (4)

GANGA 1sg gecc

3sg gecc (11), gec (3) gecc (4)
gec (3)

HALDA 2sg helz

3sg helt (5), helt
hellt

HANGA 2sg hect

3sg hecc (2), hec

VIIF) SÁ 3sg ſere (5)

SNÚA 2sg ſnereſc (2)

3sg ſnere (2), ſnere ſneɼe
ſnereſc (2),
ſnerez

VIIA) HEITA 1sg

3sg het (8), het (2), hét, hett het (2) hett
hét (10) hét

ADV. HÉR her (19), her (25), hér, her (3) heɼ (4) her (2)
hær (5) hær

Two more manuscripts in Holtsmark (AM 315 G and Ra I C IV) read

<hér>, but with the caption “overskrift” (added later by an another hand,
possibly the compiler) and therefore excluded here. The overall situation
does not seem to be far from the early Old Icelandic; subclass VIIa
preterites are sporadically marked, whereas no VIIc and f preterites are.
With 25 instances of <her> for the adverb hér in Hom II and 19 in Hom I
against but one <hér> in Hom II, even this seems to be short; statistically,
given the great occurrence of the word – and the fact that it occurs so many
time in full – one would expect it to be closer to the values of hét at least in
AM 619 4to. One could of course speculate that adverbs and other particles
received at times a different treatment from verbs, nouns and other lexically

37
richer grammatical classes – but that is arguably much harder to claim than
when they are all but heavily abbreviated as they are elsewhere.

6.5 NRA 52

Among the earliest known manuscripts are fragments of the saga of Olaf
the Saint (Ólafs saga helga hin elzta, NRA 52), found in the Norsk Riksarkiv
and dated to ca. 1225. In spite of its fragmentary state, it is not hard to note
how the scribe took very good care in marking length. The manuscript is
very accurately written, also regarding the use of the accent mark denoting
length. The following is the more recent evaluation by Lindblad (1952:88-
89):

[NRA 52] av samtliga fisl. Hss har den näst högsta accentfrekvensen vid lång
vokal och diftong. De 6 rätt obetydliga fragmenten innehåller ej mindre än 495
akutecken, och lång vokal accentueras i 77% av samtliga fall. Det högsta
percenttalet uppvisar AnR [Annales Regii] (88%).

In the original portions of the ms, most long vowels in class VII preterites
are systematically marked where they should be long (i.e. in all strong
preterites <tók>, <stóþ>, <fór>, <lét>), and the scarce attestations of the
forms <fek> (one time), <helt> (one time) and <gek> (twice) points
towards a distinctively short vowel.

6.6 GKS 2087 4to

The Annales or Konungsannáll (GKS 2087 4to) are also both very old and
precise among the sources which make use of the length mark. The

38
manuscript was written, partly in Latin and partly in Norse, by two hands
one after another, the older ending the chronicle in 1306, the younger
continuing until 1341. Unfortunately, the instances which are relevant to
the present survey do not abound, but even in their small number, point at a
short vowel in VIIc preterites. The following is a chart with all relevant VII
class verb forms in the manuscript, based on Buergel (1904).

Table 9. Orthography of class VII strong preterites in GL kgl. Sml. 2087 4to
according to Buergel (1904).

Subclass Infinitive Person and Orthography N. of Occurrences

Number

VIIa HEITA 3 sg (pres.) heít  2

3 sg hét 3
VIIb HLAUPA 3 sg líop (hljóp) 4

VIIc FALLA 3 sg fell 1

3 pl fellv 3
HALDA 3 sg hellt 1
3 pl helldv 1
FÁ Inf. fá 1
3 sg fe 1
GANGA 3 sg ge 1
3 pl gengv ?

VIId LÁTA 3 sg lét 1

3 sg létz 1
3 pl létvz 2
Part. láti 1
Part. látn  1
RÁÐA 3 sg réð 1
3 sg réðz 1

VIIf SNÚA 3 pl ſnervz 1

Here, the root vowel is regularly marked in subclasses VIIa and VIId, in
correspondence of an etymological long vowel; on the other hand, there is
no accent mark in subclass VIIc and in the only instance of subclass VIIf.

39
6.7 AM 519a 4°

The manuscript of Alexanders saga AM 519a 4°, dated ca. 1280, consists of
the 'B' version of the prose translation of the 12th century Latin epic poem
Alexandreis by Walter of Châtillon, with a lacuna of four leaves within 37
parchment leaves. The Old Norse translation is attributed to Brandr
Jónsson (born ca. 1210, died 1264) in AM 226 fol and Stock. Perg. 4° nr 24,
which are much younger than AM 519 a 4° and contain the 'A' version. The
language is surely Icelandic, and some traits point to an Icelandic scribe, but
Norwegian influence is clear throughout the manuscript, as was common in
Iceland at that time. It is especially interesting for its paleography, as it is
clearly written by a single hand, and even the corrections seem to be written
by the same hand (or by a corrector using exactly the same ductus and
spelling). There are some occasional corrections and expansions by a 17th-
century hand (de Leeuw van Weenen 2009:25).

The length mark is used less regularly for single vowels, and it never
appears on the preterites of fá, falla, ganga, halda and ganga (de Leeuw van
Weenen 2009:141). As far as VIIf is concerned, only the preterite of snúa is
attested 4 times, appearing as either sneri or snøri (although in several
instances the <e> is closed, so that it is not really distinguishable from
<ø>). The overall occurrences of <é> are 94 in all cases, against the 17524
for <e> (de Leeuw van Weenen 2009:34). The phoneme /e/ is spelled <e>
79 times, <é> 60 times (de Leeuw van Weenen 2009:51). <hét> occurs only
4 times, against the 43 times of unmarked <het>, and <her> occurs 12
times and never with the acute. The scribe, therefore, only rarely uses the
accent mark to denote vowel length.

40
6.8 AM 132 fol

The most interesting text for the present survey is doubtless Möðruvallabók
(AM 132 fol), dated ca. 1330-1370. The manuscript contains several sagas,
included Laxdæla and Fóstbræðra saga, and was written mostly by one hand,
as well as at least four minor medieval hands and a much later one, from the
seventeenth century (de Leeuw van Weenen 2000:22).

Here, according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen, the verbs fá, falla, ganga,
and halda are well attested in their multiple preterite forms, to the extent
that they exhibit parallel paradigms with alternation /e/~/i/ (attested
secondary forms are noted in brackets, all forms are normalised in the table
an their spelling discussed below).

Table 10. Variants of Subclass VIIc Preterites in AM 132 fol.

fá fekk (fengu) (fanginn)

fékk fingu fenginn
(finginn)
falla fell fellu fallinn
féll féllu
ganga gekk (gengu) gengit
gingu (gingit)
halda helt heldu haldinn
hélt héldu

Although the spelling in Möðruvallabók is generally remarkably precise, the

notation of length is not, to the extent that the editor states that “the use of
accents in Möðruvallabók is such that no conclusions for the length of
vowels can be drawn from it” (de Leeuw van Weenen 2000:63). For words
other than VII class strong verbs, only one instance of <é> and two of <ie>

41
are recorded for /e/. /é/ is usually spelled <e> 2937 times, <é> 294 times,
<ie> 275 times, <íe> 56 times, <ei> 3 times, <ié> 1 time, and <iæ> 1 time.
Lindblad (1952:128) reports 557 occurrences of the accent mark with
“etymologically long vowel”, out of the 576 single accents in the manuscript.
Subclasses VIIc and VIIf strong preterites are clearly understood by
Lindblad to have a short vowel, as it is mentioned that the accent mark
occurs but 15 times on etymologically short vowels, of which once in féll
(238:19).

But the most important innovation of the present manuscript is that a

diphthong [je] is written in the preterite singular of the verbs fá, falla and
halda. According to the index by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen (2000), the
preterite of fá is written <iek͘> one time, <ieck> 9 times, and 20 times
without diphthong, while the preterite of falla appears 8 times as <iell>, 2
times as <iellu>, 2 times as <éll> with the accent mark, and 34 times with
neither diphthong nor accent mark. It seems, therefore, that the diphthong
[je] had already spread to the preterite plural of falla and halda. The
preterite of halda appears as <hɩellt> 3 times, <hɩelt> 2 times, <hɩellu> 2
times, and once as <hɩellɩ>, for a total of 8 times, as well as 2 times with
an accent mark as <héllt>, against 40 occurrences with neither diphthong
nor accent mark.

Class VII strong preterites, however, seem to be the only cases of

diphthongation in the manuscript, since in addition to the preterites of
hanga (5 times), ganga (53 times), which are present in the manuscript but
do not show neither <ie> nor accent mark, other words which would be
expected to show <ie> just like in fékk, féll and hélt, do not. The adverb
'here' is written in full a number of times, but always as <her> (unlike
herað, which is always but once abbreviated, compounds included); forms

42
the verb eta with the present stem occur 14 times; él occurs once with an
accent mark.

6.9 Summary

To summarise, the evidence found in the earliest manuscripts of prosaic

texts is that the root vowel in subclasses VIIc, VIIf and hér was originally
short, until signs of diphthongisation appear in VIIc in the 14th century. A
similar survey, but of poetic texts, is unfortunately impossible, because the
largest part of the preterites here investigated are found in hyper-
characterised syllables, which are not distinguished from the heavy syllables
in the metre (i.e. fekk (heavy) and fékk (hyper-characterised) would behave
in exactly the same way within the metre). Nonetheless, a survey of some
subclass VIIf preterites and other instances of the sound change /e/ > [je]
has been carried out by Haukur Þorgeirsson (mentioned in a talk given at
the University of Iceland in 2009, and personal communication). The scope
of Haukur's survey was poetry after 1200 until the time of the Quantity
Shift. Out of 60 instances, sneri was found 13 times, and reri 2 times, both
always with a short vowel. This evidence clearly qualifies VIIf preterites as
the last group of all words discussed in the previous chapter, to undergo
diphthongisation (according to Björn Karel Þórólfsson 1925:115-116, as late
as the 18th century). These data also exclude the possibility that snøri was
short but the unrounded snéri was long. Even as late as the Guðbrandsbiblía
(1584), where VIIc preterites and related cases are now most often noted
with a diphthong (hiellt, blies, hiedan, ietin) , the spelling <snere> is the still
only one coming forth (cf. Jón Helgason 1929:18 and Bandle 1956:407). As
will be discussed in the final chapter, it is likely that the spelling <ie>
reflected some regional pronunciation, which took relatively longer time to

43
spread across the island and be accepted into a now well-codified written
language.

7. Conclusions

As we have seen, both subclass VIIc (hellt, fell, gekk, hekk, etc.) and VIIf
(sneri, reri, etc.) preterites occur with a short vowel from their first
attestations in Old Icelandic until the middle of the 14th century, when some
of the subclass VIIc preterites occur with the diphthong [je] in the preterite
singular (<hiellt> in Möðruvallabók AM 132 fol, from 1330-1370, cf.
Chapter 7). Therefore, the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic forms has
to account for /ĕ/ as the root vowel in Old Icelandic preterites. The most
likely origin of the short root vowel is from the old reduplicating syllable,
which would have come to bear the stress, through the elision of the old
root vowel. This could have either happened through “ejection” of the old
vowel (Jasanoff 2007) or, more likely, haplology of the entire old root
syllable (Jörundur Hilmarsson 1992). The reasons for preferring haplology
are chiefly two. On one hand, there is no evidence that a contraction ever
produced a radical /ē/ which was then subsequently shortened in Old
Norse. On the other hand, a secondary (perhaps compensatory) lengthening
of a short /e/ to */ē2/ is feasible for both subclasses VIIa (hét, lék, etc.)),
VIId (lét, réð, etc.) and VIIe (blét), which all have either a diphthong or a
long vowel in the present stem, and an open syllable structure in the
preterite plural. Concerning the archaic Anglian forms mentioned in
chapter 5 (e.g., heht, reord), their retention of a part of the old root syllable
may well indicate that in Anglian reduplication was not yet altogether
obsolete; this would mean that there is no reason to date the final loss of
reduplication back to Proto-Germanic times, and that the development in

44
Old Norse (and for sure, Old Saxon) may have been independent from that
of Old English and Old High German.

Presumably from a very early time, a fluctuation in the vowel length of

several Old Icelandic words starts taking place. Many of such words contain
/e/ in the root. It first affects (open) monosyllables which were liable of
being occasionally emphatically lengthened, according to their position in
the sentence; a sure example is the adverb her, which is primarily noted
without accent mark. Moreover, as seen in chapter 5, “archiphonemes”
primarily perceived as short, where the correlation of quantity had been
neutralised, are found in some instances of etymologically long vowels
preceding junctures and hiatus (Hreinn Benediktsson 1972:138),
monosyllabic strong preterites such as vá (from vega) and frá (from fregna)
and in several forms of the present of all verba pura (included all verbs in
subclass VIIf, e.g. snúa, róa, etc.).

Summarising, from the 14th century on, the following sound changes take
place:

a) long mid and open monophthongs were diphthongised, included the

long root vowels in most class VII strong preterites (hét, grét, blét,
etc.);
b) diphthongisation also occurred in vowels that had been interpreted as
short phonemically, i.e., where the quantity correlation had been
neutralised before a juncture or a hiatus (snúa, búa, vá, frá, etc.)

Diphthongisation also affected inherited short monophthongs, because of

different processes:

45
 c) in words starting with /h/+/e/ (héðan, hérað, but also hékk and hélt in
subclass VIIc preterites);
d) the present root vowel of the class V strong verb éta, by analogy with
its preterite forms;
e) shortened vowels in hyper-characterised syllables of neuter forms of
adjectives (skjótt, fljótt, etc.), because of an “underlying diphthong”
extended from their masculine and feminine forms.

Subclass VIIc preterites hekk and helt were probably the pioneers of the
diphthongisation to [je], because of their word-initial /h/. Through this
process, a first couple of preterites in subclass VIIc to be considered
typologically closer to the diphthongised ones in other subclasses: the new
syllable structures /CjeRC/ (/hjelt/) and /CjeCC/ /hjekk/) are closer to
/CjeC/ (/hje:t/, /rje:ð/) and /CRjeC/ (/grje:t/, /blje:t/) than the original
/CeRC/ (helt) and /CeCC/ (hekk). Gradually, the analogical process spreads
across more forms of subclass VIIc preterites too, but not to the plural of
forms containing the cluster /ng/, whose root vowel had undergone another
diphthongisation to [ei]. This is still evident in the modern pronunciation
[ej] of the preterite plural forms fengum and gengum (cf. Sigfús Blöndal
1924:170 [fɛiɳ·gøm] and [gɛiɳ·gøm], which in mod. IPA would be
['fejɳg̊ʏm], ['gejɳg̊ʏm]), and also héngum, which at times shows both
diphthongs (['hjejɳg̊ʏm]) because of the word-initial /h/, beside the regular
héldum ['hjeld̊ʏm] and féllum ['fjetlʏm]. The diphthong [ei] in fengum and
gengum, but also in héngum, clearly go back to a short monophthong.
Meanwhile, the number of items in subclass VIIc is reduced, as falda and
blanda become weak (cf. Sigfús Blöndal 1924:172 and 84).

Lastly, subclass VIIf preterites (snera, rera, etc.) are affected by the
diphthongisation. There are several reasons why the subclass VIIf preterites

46
got a diphthong much later than subclass VIIc preterites. First, as posited in
chapter 5, the opposition of quantity was neutralised in much of the present
stem, possibly all the way to the Quantity Shift in the 16th century.
Consequently, the present could not be the source of analogical lengthening
of the root vowel in the preterite. Secondly, the bisyllabic structure of the
preterite singular forms on one hand, and the dialectal fluctuation
between /ö/ and /e/ which to a certain extent continues until as late as the
20th century (see below), contributed in keeping the subclass typologically
separated from the others. Thirdly, and as a consequence of the said
separation, the verbs were soon reanalysed as of a new kind of weak type,
as if it formed the preterite by means of an -r- infix; for this reason, the
second syllable in the preterite singular was perceived of as an inflected
ending comparable to that of a weak verb (snera > sneri, with ending -ri as
the weak dental suffix -ði). Here too, as late as the 20th century the process
is incomplete, as the remaining four verbs in subclass VIIf all have non-
diphthongised variants, at least until the 20th century. Sigfús Blöndal,
writing in the 1920's, reports the pronunciations [sn(j)ɛ:rɪ] and [sn(j)ɛ:røm]
with optional [j] and also optional pronunciation [snö:rɪ] (Sigfús Blöndal
1924:769); [rɛ:rɪ] beside [rjɛ:rɪ] (and [rö:rɪ] in East Skaftafell, East Fjords
and West Fjords) (1924:657); similarly, [grɛ:rɪ], [grjɛ:rɪ], [grö:rɪ] (1924:274);
and [njɛ:rɪ] beside [nö:rɪ] in the East Fjords (1924:583). Finally, sá (mod.
pret. sáði, according to the Beygingarlýsing íslensks nútímamáls) migrated
to the 'weak proper' conjugation, forming the preterite with a dental suffix.

47
8. Bibliography

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Urgermanischen. Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universität zu
Berlin. Akten der Konferenz vom 24.3 – 26.3.1992 aus Anlaß von Franz
Bopps zweihundertjährigem Geburtstag am 14.9.1991. Ed. Reinhard
Sternemann. pp. 15-20. Carl Winter, Heidelberg.

Bandle, Oscar. 1956. Die Sprache der Guðbrandsbiblía. Orthographie und

Laute, Formen. Munksgård, Hafniæ.

Beyingarlýsing íslensks nútímamáls. Ed. Kristín Bjarnadóttir. Stofnun Árna

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orðmyndum á 16. öld og síðar. Fjelagsprentsmiðjan, Reykjavík.

Björn Karel Þórólfsson. 1929a. Kvantitetsomvæltningen i islandsk. Arkiv för

Nordisk Filologi 45:35-81.

Björn Karel Þórólfsson. 1929b. Nokkur orð um hinar íslensku

hljóðbreytingar é > je og y, ý, ey > i, í, ei. Studier tillägnade Axel Kock.
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Braune, Wilhelm. 1967. Althochdeutsche Grammatik. Niemeyer, Tübingen.

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Bremmer, Rolf H. Jr. 2000. An Introduction to Old Frisian. History,
Grammar, Reader, Glossary. Benjamins: Leiden and Philadelphia.

Cleasby, Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson. 1874. An Icelandic-English

Dictionary. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Fulk, R.D. 1987. Reduplicating Verbs and their Development in Northwest

Germanic. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur
109:159-178.

Garnes, Sara. 1976. Quantity in Icelandic: production and perception. Buske,

Hamburg.

Haugen, Einar. 1982. Scandinavian Language Structures: A Comparative

Historical Study. Niemeyer, Tübingen.

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