Icelandic Word Research Articles

Gapassipi

Gapassipi

Epík, keramík og klassík: Gerð og beyging fleirkvæðra orða sem enda á -ík

Greinin fjallar um gerð og beyging fleirkvæðra orða sem enda á -ík eins og t.d. epík, keramík og klass´ík.

Óravíddir

This paper describes an interactive exhibition about the vocabulary of the Icelandic language. The exhibition is called Óravíddir – Orðaforðinn í nýju ljósi (e. Vastness – The Vocabulary in a New Light) and was opened at the Culture House in Reykjavík, a part of The National Museum of Iceland in May 2019. The exhibition used data from the word database Íslenskt orðanet (The Icelandic Word Web) and illustrates semantic relations between words in a threedimensional visualization. The paper introduces Íslenskt orðanet followed by a description on how the data was used to create the network graph visualization. Then we discuss the setup of the exhibition and finally we conclude by reflecting on future possibilities and further development.

Greining á orðanotkun í lesskilningsog náttúruvísindahlutum PISA 2018: Samanburður á íslensku þýðingunni og enska textanum

Markmið þessarar rannsóknar var að kanna samræmi í orðtíðni í íslenskum og enskum textum á lesskilnings- og náttúruvísindahluta PISA-prófanna 2018. Ef þýðing texta í alþjóðlegu prófi er þyngri eða léttari en sami texti á upprunalega málinu getur það haft áhrif á skilning og skekkt samanburð milli tungumála.Greindir voru tveir textar úr lesskilningshluta PISA 2018 og tveir úr náttúruvísindahlutanum. Notaður var orðtíðnilisti Íslenskrar risamálheildar og enskur orðtíðnilisti sem byggist á tveimur málheildum og er aðgengilegur í gegnum hugbúnaðinn VocabProfile. Orðin voru flokkuð eftir tíðni í fimm flokka. Ef munur var á tíðniflokki orða á íslensku og ensku var kannað hvort til væri samheiti fyrir íslenska orðið í sama tíðniflokki og það enska og lengd samheita borin saman.Niðurstöður benda til að hlutfall algengustu orða sé lægra í textum íslensku þýðingarinnar en í ensku frumtextunum og að hlutfall orða í flokki sjaldgæfustu orðanna sé umtalsvert hærra í íslensku textunum en þeim ensku. Þá virðist dreifing orða á milli orðtíðniflokka vera jafnari í ensku en íslensku þýðingunni. Fram komu vísbendingar um ákveðið ósamræmi og ójafnvægi sem fólst í að tveir þriðju hlutar þeirra íslensku orða, sem féllu í annan tíðniflokk en ensku orðin, voru sjaldgæfari en samsvarandi ensk orð. Í ljós kom að fækka hefði mátt orðum í ólíkum orðtíðniflokkum með því að nota íslenskt samheiti í sama orðtíðniflokki og enska orðið og að draga hefði mátt enn frekar úr ósamræminu með því að velja samheiti úr nærliggjandi tíðniflokki. Hlutfall íslenskra samheita sem voru algengari og lengri var yfir 30% í textunum fjórum. Niðurstöðurnar gefa tilefni til að endurskoða þurfi leiðbeiningar OECD og beina því til þýðenda að þeir taki mið af orðtíðnilistum við val á orðum.

Heterósexísk orðanotkun íslenskra framhaldsskólanema

Rannsóknin fjallar um heterósexíska orðanotkun íslenskra framhaldsskólanemenda sem hefur ýmsar birtingarmyndir. Erlendar rannsóknir benda til að orðanotkunin valdi nemendum óþægindum en fáar íslenskar rannsóknir fjalla um efnið. Markmiðið var að skoða tilteknar íslenskar birtingarmyndir orðanotkunarinnar, svo sem notkun orðanna faggi/faggalegt um óviðeigandi hegðun og gay um heimskulega/asnalega hegðun/fyrirbæri. Algengi orðanotkunarinnar var skoðað, kynjamunur, aðstæðurnar sem orðanotkunin fór fram í innan skóla, á netinu og annars staðar samanborið við utan skóla og áhrif orðalagsins á líðan nemenda. Gagna var af lað með spurningalista sem var lagður fyrir nemendur 18 ára og eldri (n=149) í þremur framhaldsskólum með bekkja- eða áfangakerfi á höfuðborgarsvæðinu. Algengi orðanotkunarinnar var misjafnt, transa/tranný yfir trans fólk var sjaldgæfast (5%) en faggi/faggalegt yfir óviðeigandi hegðun var algengast (54%) og því næst kynskiptingur yfir trans fólk (34%). Strákar voru líklegri en stelpur til að hafa notað sum form heterósexísks orðalags. Hærra hlutfall þátttakenda taldi að þeir væru líklegri til að nota heterósexískt orðalag utan skóla en í búningsklefanum, í íþróttatíma eða í skólastofum. Hlutfall þátttakenda sem upplifði óþægindi af að heyra orðanotkunina var misjafnt. Hæst hlutfall þátttakenda upplifði óþægindi af að heyra trukkalessa um stelpu sem hegðaði sér ekki kvenlega (65%), 64% upplifðu óþægindi af að heyra gay yfir heimskulega/asnalega hegðun og 63% af að heyra faggi yfir strák sem hegðaði sér ekki karlmannlega. Fæstir þátttakendur upplifðu óþægindi af að heyra orðið kynskiptingur um trans fólk (32%). Niðurstöður rannsóknarinnar benda til að íslenskir framhaldsskólanemendur noti heterósexískt orðalag í mismiklum mæli en margir upplifi óþægindi af að heyra það. Ef hægt er að draga úr slíku orðalagi gæti það haft jákvæð áhrif á nemendur í námi og í framtíðinni.

Að halda uppi lögum og reglum: Saga og orðmyndun orðsins lögregla

This article deals with the history and word formation of the Icelandic word for ‘police’, i.e. lögregla. The word constitutes an interesting case of word formation in that said lexeme is a dvandva compound whose creation is related to the expression að halda uppi lögum og reglu ‘to maintain law and order’. Moreover, it is argued that the word has arisen in the wake of the Icelandic purist movement in the first half of the 19th century, and that its creator is Konráð Gíslason, who was at the time a member of the Icelandic Literary Society (Hið íslenzka bókmenntafélag) and editor of the journal Fjölnir. According to the sources, the word, lögregla, cannot have been formed as an independent lexical item. In fact, the word appears first in a compound with maður‘man’, meaning ‘policeman’ or, more precisely, ‘a man who is in charge of maintaining law and order’. It is argued that lögregla has in fact been created in order to gradually substitute the Danish loanword pólití, first in compounds such as pólitímaður and pólitíþjónn ‘policeman’, and then as a single lexeme. The Danish loanword pólití had a twofold meaning: ‘policeman’ and ‘police’. Moreover, it is argued that lögregla, as an unbound lexeme, was initially a shortened form for lögreglumaður, and later assumed the general meaning ‘police force’ by means of synecdoche (pars pro toto).

Cultivating the Heart: Feeling and Emotion in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Religious Texts

Cultivating the Heart: Feeling and Emotion in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Religious Texts

Wakeful rest alleviates interference-based forgetting

Retroactive interference (RI)—the disruptive influence of events occurring after the formation of a new memory—is one of the primary causes of forgetting. Placing individuals within an environment that postpones interference should, therefore, greatly reduce the likelihood of information being lost from memory. For example, a short period of wakeful rest should diminish interference-based forgetting. To test this hypothesis, participants took part in a foreign language learning activity and were shown English translations of 20 Icelandic words for immediate recall. Half of the participants were then given an 8-min rest before completing a similar or dissimilar interfering distractor task. The other half did not receive a rest until after the distractor task, at which point interference had already taken place. All participants were then asked to translate the Icelandic words for a second time. Results revealed that retention was significantly worse at the second recall test, but being allowed a brief rest before completing the distractor task helped reduce the amount of forgetting. Taking a short, passive break can shield new memories from RI and alleviate forgetting.

On Justice. Equal Rights (jafnrétti), Equal Position (jafnræði) and Equality (jöfnuður)

In this short paper I will try to explain some thoughts concerning what I take to be the basic aspect of morality, namely justice. These thoughts are expressed in the subtitle of my paper where I put Icelandic words in bracket (this paper was originally planned to be in Icelandic). These three words refer to the main aspects of the concept of justice when we apply it to what I believe to be the three basic dimensions of human society, namely the spiritual or cultural, the political or public, and the economic or technical dimension.

The Life and Death of the Medieval Icelandic Short Story

There was never any such thing as a medieval Icelandic short story. Nevertheless it had its presence as a category of scholarly thought for most of the twentieth century in the form of the saga subgenre known as the þattr.1 Below I will explore how this came about. I will discuss the circumstances of its birth, the premises for its well-being, the ideological context it thrived in, and the reasons for its eventual decline and fall. This study is concerned with the how no less than the what, as it aims to illuminate the whole story of this category. The medieval Icelandic short story had its own name, and the term “short story” was rarely used. Scholars flirted with the term, mainly in the 1970s and the 1980s, without daring to use it openly.2 The Icelandic word

Teaching an Icelandic Student with Autism to Read by Combining Direct Instruction and Precision Teaching

An eight-year-old boy with autism was taught to read using a combination of Direct Instruction and Precision Teaching. At the onset of the programme he had pronunciation problems and poor phonemic awareness and could not decode. In the absence of any designed Direct Instruction material in Icelandic, the present work implemented the Direct Instruction technique of teaching sounds and letters through multiple learning channels, in conjunction with Precision Teaching and frequency building exercises. SAFMEDS flashcards were used for some of the discrimination training, and an audio click was delivered as an informative feedback immediately after each correct responding during some of the instruction and fluency practices. The work was exploratory with the aim that the student would read Icelandic words at approximately 150 correct syllables per minute. One year follow-up assessments showed that he had retained the skill taught during the teaching intervention.

Referential Subject and Object Gaps in Modern Icelandic

This paper investigates the nature of subject and object gaps in coordinate structures in Modern Icelandic. Modern Icelandic is considered to be a semi-<em>pro</em>-drop language, since it generally licenses only generic null subjects; object gaps only occur in the form of topic drop. Nevertheless it has been argued that MI licenses referential subject <em>pro</em> as well as referential object <em>pro</em> in certain (tightly restricted) contexts. This assumption is based on the existence of coordinating constructions that exhibit referential subject and object gaps at the same time. While this paper follows previous proposals in assuming subject <em>pro</em> to be licit in coordinate structures, object argument gaps are assumed to be object-topic drop, which is independetly needed in the grammar of Icelandic. Under the analysis presented here, the previously reported null subject condition on null objects falls out from Icelandic word order facts.

Word Order Change in Icelandic: From OV to VO (review)

Reviewed by: Word order change in Icelandic: From OV to VO by Thorbjörg Hróarsdóttir Benji Wald Word order change in Icelandic: From OV to VO. By Thorbjörg Hróarsdóttir. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2000. Pp. xii, 385. ISBN 1556192096. $114 (Hb). In this revision of her doctoral dissertation at the University of Tromsø, Hróarsdóttir combines sophisticated discussion of theoretical syntax with valuable new textual data on the rigidification of VO syntax in the history of Icelandic. H notes in passing that Icelandic has received widest attention as a case in which OV syntax has been lost in favor of VO syntax while maintaining a fully functioning nominal case system (in contrast to English, for example, where a similar word order shift was accompanied by, and has often been attributed to, the decline of its case system). However, her overriding concern is with characterizing what happened in the history of Icelandic word order and not with why it happened. After three general theoretical background chapters, H’s original contribution begins with Ch. 4 (the decline of OV word order, 53–78). Here she introduces her historical database (personal letters, when available), beginning with the fourteenth century and continuing up to 1870. She analyzes the data for each successive century, with the additional detail of separate analyses for each of seven successive age groups between 1730 and 1870, the critical period during which OV syntax was completely eliminated in most contexts, contexts in which OV syntax is judged unacceptable/ungrammatical by current speakers. The many tables presenting the statistical results of her analyses show that OV and VO syntax were both present from the earliest documented period (fourteenth century), with OV syntax gradually declining until the critical period (1730–1870) when it was rapidly eliminated. The tables also indicate that the word order variation was subject to consistent grammatical conditioning until the demise of OV syntax, most notably conditioning by the nature of the objects, for example, whether definite or indefinite, light or heavy, and so on. Discussion of representative examples and of tables of statistical data, and the historical trends they exhibit, continues through Ch. 7 (word order patterns, 177–223). In Ch. 8 (object positions, 227–55) H turns to applying generative syntactic models to the historical trends discussed in the preceding chapters. She rejects the less conventional model of alternating bases (proposed by Anthony Kroch and Susan Pintzuk for early English), arguing that generation from two separate bases is implausible for single clauses in which word order is ‘split’ between a preposed and postposed object (e.g. Indirect Object-Verb-Direct Object). Instead, she adopts a version of principles and parameters syntax (proposed by Richard Kayne) in which all constituent movements are leftward. Here, universal implications of the Kaynian model aside, H proposes, contrary to the book’s subtitle, that Icelandic has been a basic VO language throughout its recorded history and that the changes in word order reflect the loss of optional leftward movements of postverbal constituents. Implications for the history of English and the other Scandinavian languages are sometimes alluded to in passing. In Ch. 9 (parameter change, 257–343) she refines her model to unite into a single parameter the two optional movements that were simultaneously lost during the nineteenth century. One of the lost options allowed OV order; the other allowed Main V-Aux V order. She labels the single parameter ‘remnant VP-preposing’. Thus, H illustrates the interesting theme that sometimes historical considerations can be useful in selecting among competing synchronic descriptions, in this case one in which a single rule is preferable to one in which object preposing and auxiliary ‘postposing’ are analyzed as independent movements. H’s book advances knowledge of the Icelandic word order change, and it is clearly written and well-organized. It is worth further scrutiny by anyone interested in the details of word order change, even for its data if not for its particular theoretical conclusions. Copyright © 2003 Linguistic Society of America

The mind and art of Calderón: essays on the Comedias (review)

164 Reviews been changed back to mirror more closely that of the Icelandic, although not at the expense of natural English expression. The vocabulary remains fairly static, with most changes reflecting a now closer relationship between the English and Icelandic word. Some changes seem unnecessary, as in the case of 'mate' preferred over 'friend' for 'fylgdarmaflr'. The spelUng of names is unchanged except for the female patronymic as in 'Sur's-daughter', rather than 'Sur's Daughter'. On the whole, these 'extensive revisions' have made the text seem more fluid and less consciously translated, while retaining a subtle sense of the Icelandic syntax. The glossary and map make it easier to follow the somewhat complex interwoven strands of plot, and the notes provide an undaunting yet broad selection of critical works in a range of languages. This edition represents a welcome, andtimely,addition to the Penguin Classics range of Icelandic texts, and one that wiU be useful to both amateurs and students of this splendid saga. Louise A. Trott Department of EngUsh University of Sydney Parker, A. A., The mind and art of Calderdn: essays on the Comedias, ed. D. Kong, Cambridge, C. U. P., 1988; cloth; pp. xiv, 417; R. R. P. A U S $ 136.00. A review of this book is in essence a critical summary of a lifetime's work on Calderdn. Most of its first twenty chapters is a reworking, expansion, and development ofParker's articles that have appeared in each decade from the 1940s to the 1980s. Five of thefinalsix chapters introduce substantiaUy new material on those plays that focus on public affairs and especially the court plays based on classical mythology. Two, at least, of the book's stated aims are fully satisfied: to render comprehensible Calder6n's ideas and the language in which they are expressed, by means of clarifying textual commentaries, and to provide an understanding of the Spanish seventeenth century for a twentieth-century, English-speaking reader that would allow that reader to interpret Calderdn's plays in their appropriate social, historical and political context. A self-confessed traditionalist in the world of contemporary critical theory, Parker is even so brave as to refer to Calderdn's intention in relation to his plays, whde at the same time acknowledging the interpretive possibilities open to those with 'modern' critical sensibdities. The book is of very great value to the student of Calder6n, because it brings together the large number of important studies undertaken during Parker's career. His seminal article, published originally as The approach to the Spanish drama of the Golden Age, now modified, becomes the source from which flows the interpretation of individual works in the following chapters. In thisfirstchapter, Reviews 165 Parker expounds the importance of a thematic interpretation as it is derived from a work's structural unity, showing how the dramatic function inevitably bears a conceptual relationship to theme. Near the end of the book, Parker is able to show how past criticism, especially of Calderdn's tragedies, has placed the works' apparent moraUty before their dramatic and thematic arguments, leading to a misinterpretation of the so-caUed 'honour plays'. Parker also tackles those modern definitions of tragedy that have tended to exclude Calderdn's plays, on the grounds that a strict adherence to a code of honour and Calderdn's religious belief made it impossible for him to deal in truly tragic constructs. Parker shows that while the role of blind fate holds Uttle sway in Calderdn's plays, in dealing with questions of diffused moral responsibiUty in circumstances where it is impossible to assign guilt Calderdn actually extends the concept of tragedy. FoUowing the interpretive essay that opens the book are chapters on Calderdn's use of metaphor, symbol, myth, poetic truth and dramatic structure, and how these developed in relation to the playwright's own life experiences. The interpretive essays on individual plays are organized around the theme of social Ufe (with its manifestation in works of a basically domestic sphere), pubUc, political and religious concerns, and the plays devised for performance at court, which combined stage performance, music and the spectacle of royalty itself. This last section of material, pubUshed here for...

Icelandic Word Order and Binary Branching

Certain word order facts in Icelandic have been claimed, by several linguists, to provide evidence that Icelandic has no VP constituent (in s-structure) in sentences where the main verb is finite. If correct, this entails that Icelandic phrase structure is not always binary branching, contradicting the hypothesis that all phrase structure is binary branching. It is shown to be incorrect. A new theory of Icelandic sentence structure is presented, based on Platzack (in press), but strictly observing binary branching. The theory presented is shown to be empirically more adequate than the less constrainedĀ-nary branching theories.

ICELANDIC WORD STRESS AND METRICAL PHONOLOGY

ICELANDIC WORD STRESS AND METRICAL PHONOLOGY

Icelandic Word Order: In Support of Drift as a Diachronic Principle Specific to Language Families

Proceedings of the 4th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1978), pp. 446-457

English Terms in Scientific Writings

THE S.P.E. Tract No. 48 (Oxford, Clarendon Press; 1937) contains three articles that are of interest to writers on scientific subjects. Mr. Otto Jesperson deals with the use of such terms and phrases as ‘almost’ before a verb or noun, ‘kind of or’ sort of, ‘rather than’, ‘as much as’, and so on. Sir W. A. Craigie notes many variations in the spelling of English words, but concludes that “the irregularities of modern English are of slight importance in relation to the language as a whole”. Dr. C. G. Darwin's article on “Terminology in Physics” is reprinted from NATURE (138, 908; 1936). His main points, it will be remembered, are: the difficulty of translating appropriately a term from a foreign language, the use of an inventor's name instead of a descriptive term, and the use of adjectives, such as ‘microscopic’ and ‘macroscopic’, to express opposite ideas by words of nearly the same sound and spelling. Others may be added to this list. For example, ‘sismi’, an equivalent for earthquakes, is simple to pronounce in Italian, and ‘seismes' still more so in French, but the corresponding English term ‘seisms' is intolerable. Another point is the formation of the singular of a word that has come down to us in the plural only. It would seem permissible, because natural and convenient, to use ‘scree’ as the singular of the Icelandic word ‘screes’.