On the phonological boundary between constituents of modern Icelandic compound words

Abstract

If the word boundary is posited between constituents of Mod­ ern Icelandic compound words, a number of mutually unrelated phonolog­ ical phenomena are accounted for without any extra machinery (say, in the structure of rules). However, I have not been able to prove that any Modern Icelandic phonological phenomena actually Require the word boundary between constituents of compound words. I could only demonstrate that certain phenomena require SOME boundary between constituents of compound words; if the boundary required in those cases is identified with the morpheme boundary, certain phonological rules of Modern Icelandic have to be complicated in ways which can be avoided when the said boundary is assumed to be a word boundary.