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Um ar- og ir-fleirtölu karlkynsnafnorða í nútímaíslensku

Höfundur:	Margrét Jónsdóttir
Birtist í:	Íslensku máli og almennri málfræði: 15. árgangi, 1993, bls. 78 - 98

Útdráttur

In Icelandic, strong masculine nouns with a monosyllabic stem and the ending -ur in the nominative singular form their plural with -ar and -ir; the former group being the more numerous of the two. In some cases, the distribution of these plural morphemes is predictable due to the vowel in the stem and the number of the following consonants. This paper deals with that problem.

In the first part, there is a short discussion of the masculine declension and how the plural is formed. In the second part, the words in question are discussed. The results are as follows:

1. Words of the type (-)VCC(C)-:

a.       ar-plural: all words with [a], [u], [au], [ou], and nearly all with [a].

b.      ir-plural: most (but not all) words with [r], [ɪ], [i], [ei].

c.       The number of words with [ʏ] that form plural with -ar and -ir is nearly equal.

d. Examples of words containing [ö], [öi] and [ai] are too rare to allow any conclusions to be drawn.

2. Words of the type (-)VC-:

a.       ir-plural: most (but not all) words with [a], [c], [ɪ], [ʏ], [ai].

b.      ar-plural: most (but not all) words with [i], [u], [öi], [au], [ou].

c.       More words with [ei] form their plural with -ar than -ir.

d.      Examples of words containing [o] are too rare to allow any conclusions to be drawn.

In the third part, the rules involved are discussed as well as the relationship between stem and choice of ending and the functions and predictability of the ending. The results are then compared to the monosyllabic strong feminine nouns with the nominative ending -ø that also form their plural with -ir and -ar, the former group being far the more numerous of the two. In most cases, the distribution of these plural morphemes is predictable, due to the vowel in the stem if the word is of the type (-)VC. Then, the ending normally is -ir if the vowel it follows is [u], [ɔ], [ö]>[a], [öi], [ai], [ou] or [au], and -ar if the vowel is [ɪ], [i] or [ei]. Nearly all words of the type (-)VCC(C) form their plural with -ir. In the fourth and final part, the main results are summarized.