Abstract
Runic evidence shows that the phonemes r and palatal ʀ merged at an early date in West Norse. I argue here that skaldic poetry also comprises valid evidence of this merger and that there is no reas ...
Highlights
Old Norse distinguished between r which descended from IndoEuropean r, and a phoneme conventionally represented as ʀ, descended from Indo-European s voiced to z by Verner’s law
The exact realization of ʀ is unknown but since it affected preceding vowels in the same way as i did (ʀ-mutation) it is often referred to as palatal r
For the period of transition, both the runic and the skaldic evidence is quite sparse but the two sources of data seem to be in harmony
Summary
Old Norse distinguished between r which descended from IndoEuropean r, and a phoneme conventionally represented as ʀ, descended from Indo-European s voiced to z by Verner’s law. The ʀ phoneme eventually merged with r in all the Nordic languages and is not represented in any surviving manuscript. It is, represented by a special symbol in runic writing, the ýr rune. Palatal ʀ is most common in inflectional endings, such as in kurmʀ : kunukʀ (Old Icelandic Gormr konungr) and tanmarkaʀ (Old Icelandic Danmarkar) on the older Jelling stone (DR 41). It is common in pro nouns such as þaiʀa (Sö 120 Skogshall; Old Icelandic þeira) and þaʀ (Ög 136 Rök; Old Icelandic þær).
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