Research Group for Medieval Philology: Robert Paulsen, LLE

“Ef maðr drepr foðuʀ ſin eða broðor ...”

This presentation will be in close connection to the one I gave earlier this year (ling.b.uib.no). Again, the subject matter will be the unique phenomenon that is Old Norwegian vowel harmony, particularly in the law manuscript Holm perg 34 4^to.

In Old Norwegian manuscripts, one can observe a tendency for the unstressed vowels /i/ and /u/ to be written as either <i>, <u> or <e>, <o> in accordance with the tongue height of the preceding stressed vowel: In general, high vowels are followed by high <i> and <u>, while low <e> and <o> follow low vowels. There is, however, a typological problem with the low short vowels: They are partially followed by <i> and <u>, even though their long counterparts and the mid high short vowels are not!

However, rather than discussing vowel harmony from a comparative and typological perspective – as I did in May – the focus will now be of a more philological nature: Through which orthographical features is vowel harmony expressed by the scribes of this particular manuscript? How does this connect to the manuscript’s overall orthography? How does the manuscript compare to other copies of the same text with regard to vowel harmony and related features?

On a more linguistically oriented note I will also discuss what implications my findings might have for the reconstruction of Old Norwegian phonology.

Robert Paulsen is a PhD. fellow at the Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies at the University of Bergen.