{"title":"How inaccurate rhymes reveal Old Norse vowel phonemes","authors":"Þór Sigurðsson","doi":"10.52145/mom.v115i1.2185","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses so-called inaccurate rhymes in Old Norse dróttkvætt poetry and their bearing on the phoneme structure of Old Norse. Inaccurate rhymes between /ǫ/ and /a/ do occur, but were to some extent avoided in Old Norse poems in the eleventh and the twelfth century. The same applies to rhymes between /ǫ́/ and /á/ in the second half of the twelfth century. This avoidance confirms the status of /ǫ́/ as a phoneme by providing, indirectly, an opposition between /á/ and /ǫ́/. Furthermore, rhymes between the diphthong /ja/ and the vowel /a/ were used infrequently in the tenth century, and the diphthong /jó/ and the vowel /ó/ were not rhymed at all. Thus /ja/ and /jó/ were not treated as a sequence of a consonant /j/ and a vowel.","PeriodicalId":53041,"journal":{"name":"Maal og Minne","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Maal og Minne","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.52145/mom.v115i1.2185","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article discusses so-called inaccurate rhymes in Old Norse dróttkvætt poetry and their bearing on the phoneme structure of Old Norse. Inaccurate rhymes between /ǫ/ and /a/ do occur, but were to some extent avoided in Old Norse poems in the eleventh and the twelfth century. The same applies to rhymes between /ǫ́/ and /á/ in the second half of the twelfth century. This avoidance confirms the status of /ǫ́/ as a phoneme by providing, indirectly, an opposition between /á/ and /ǫ́/. Furthermore, rhymes between the diphthong /ja/ and the vowel /a/ were used infrequently in the tenth century, and the diphthong /jó/ and the vowel /ó/ were not rhymed at all. Thus /ja/ and /jó/ were not treated as a sequence of a consonant /j/ and a vowel.