Icelandic grammar

Icelandic morphology is prototypical of Germanic/Indo-European languages. Nouns decline for case, number and gender. Adjectives decline for case, number, gender and definiteness (i.e. weak and strong). In nouns, definiteness and non-definiteness depend on articles, but are not related to strong and weak declension types. In nouns, weak and strong declension types describe endings expressing gender, case, and number, rather than definiteness and non-definiteness. Icelandic has only a definite article, which can stand on its own or be attached to its modified noun. Verbs are conjugated for tense, mood, person, number and voice. There are three voices: active, passive and medial. There are only two simple tenses, past and present, along with a number of auxiliary constructions, some of which may be regarded as tenses, others as aspects. Nouns Icelandic nouns are declined in four cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. They belong to three main noun classes (masculine, feminine, neuter) and can be inflected for number (singular, plural) and definiteness (definite, indefinite). There are two main declension paradigms for nouns from all noun classes: strong nouns (i.e. root ending in consonant) and weak nouns (root ending in a vowel), which are further divided in smaller groups for declension, according to many criteria (sound-shifts, consonant clusters, etc.) The following table shows four examples of strong declension. The gender of a noun can often be surmised by looking at the ending of the word: • Masculine nouns—often end in -ur, -i, -ll, or -nn in the nominative. • Feminine nouns—often end in -a, -ing, or -un in the nominative. • Neuter nouns—usually have no ending or have a final accented vowel in the nominative. But this is not always reliable. Many endings overlap between genders (see how the -a ending appears in the strong masculine, feminine, and neuter), and exceptions and more complicated rules make this type of discernation impossible. For example, the word (north) is a neuter noun, although it ends in -ur which is typically reserved for masculine nouns. Articles Icelandic does not have an indefinite article (a/an in English), and the definite article (the in English) is usually joined to the end of the word. The table below shows the different suffix forms for the three genders in the nominative. This list is not exhaustive, and there are numerous exceptions in every case. The examples below show three nouns, one for each respective gender, declined in the nominative: • masculine: —"(a) boy" becomes —"the boy" • feminine: —"(a) girl" becomes —"the girl" • neuter: —"(a) child" becomes —"the child" The independent, or free-standing, definite article (not attached to the noun as a suffix) exists in Icelandic in the form . It is used mostly in poetry and irregularly elsewhere (there are hardly any rules for the latter case; it is mainly a matter of taste). Pronouns Personal The personal pronouns in Icelandic are as follows: Icelandic has separate masculine, feminine and neuter words for they. The masculine is used when referring to an all masculine group, the feminine for an all feminine group, and the neuter for either an all neuter or a mixed-gender group. Like in English, the pronoun usually comes before the verb, as in the example below: :''''—I am called Magnús'' But, just as easily, the order of the sentence may be inverted. In this case, the pronoun moves to the end of the sentence: :''''—Magnús I am called (or, literally Magnús called am I'') In English, changing the word order like this would either render a phrase nonsensical or make it sound poetic. This is mainly due to the fact that whilst being a Germanic language, English has lost most of its noun declension. See syntax for more information. Icelandic has also two extra lesser used personal pronouns. They are as follows: These two personal pronouns are now archaic. They are a leftover from the Old Icelandic (and Old Norse) use of a dual number along with the singular and plural when it came to the 1st and 2nd person pronouns. Modern Icelandic plural forms of those pronouns ( and ) are what were the dual number form, while the old plurals ( and ) are now only used in formal speech. Reflexive Icelandic possesses a reflexive pronoun, functioning in much the same way as German , although unlike German it also has a dative and a genitive. The nominative case does not exist. For example, :''''—he washes himself'', as opposed to being bathed by another, :''''—she dresses herself'', as opposed to being dressed. The pronoun does not distinguish gender or number. Possessive Modern Icelandic has only possessive pronouns for the first-person singular, second-person singular and the third-person reflexive. They are as follows, where the three columns for each person represent masculine, feminine and neuter genders respectively: means mine, means (singular) yours and (which is a reflexive possessive pronoun) means his, her, its or theirs. If one is to indicate possession for a person and number not amongst these pronouns (e.g. ours, plural yours, non-reflexive his, hers, its and theirs) the genitive of the corresponding (same person and number) personal pronoun is used. Icelandic also has a possessive of the archaic personal pronoun . This possessive is only used in formal or official situations, and means ours. Demonstrative The Icelandic demonstrative pronouns are as follows, where the three columns for each person represent masculine, feminine and neuter genders respectively: and roughly correspond to this and that, and means the other one of two. Indefinite There are around fifteen to twenty of these, depending on how they are counted. A paradigm for (nobody) is given below. Numerals The numbers one to four are declined for the respective cases and genders: Other numbers are as follows and not declined, except for those that are actually nouns: The word is actually a neuter noun, can be either feminine or neuter and the higher multiples of a thousand are either masculine or feminine, according to the ending (e.g. is feminine, is masculine and so on). is neuter. Adjectives Adjectives must agree with the gender, number and grammatical case of the nouns they describe. For example, the word íslenskur (Icelandic) agrees as follows: In strong declension, for example: :''''—I live with an Icelandic woman'' Both and are dative singular. In this case, the preposition governs the case ( can also take the accusative). This is an example of strong declension of adjectives. If an adjective is modified by the article, or most pronouns, weak declension is used. For this word it would be : An example of weak declension: :''''—I saw the sick woman'' is the weak declension of (sick) in the accusative singular. is also accusative singular, but with the definite article attached (-na), and the article forces the adjective to be weak. Here the verb governs the case. The weak forms of nouns are often found in names of organisations, symbols, days and titles, for example: • ''—the Icelandic flag • ''—the First Day of Summer Here there are far fewer forms to learn, three in total, although one has to learn how they are distributed. Verbs There are four moods in Icelandic: indicative, imperative, conditional, and subjunctive. As with most inflected languages, the verbs in Icelandic determine (or govern) the case of the subsequent nouns, pronouns and adjectives of a sentence. For example: • ('to collect or save') governs the dative case: :: '' :: I am saving money to be able to buy a Christmas gift for Mum. (' is the dative plural form of ' "coin") • ("to miss") governs the genitive case: :: '' :: I miss you In the infinitive, most Icelandic verbs end in -a. Some exceptions include a few verbs ending in -á, such as ('hit'); ('flay'). Other exceptions include the auxiliaries and ; (wash), which was originally ; and a verb borrowed from Danish, (happen). There are three main groups of weak verbs in Icelandic: -ar, -ir, and -ur, referring to the endings that these verbs take when conjugated in the third person singular present. The strong verbs and the irregular verbs (auxiliaries, ri-verbs and ) are a separate matter. Take the infinitive ('to talk'), for example: Note how, for each of the verb groups, the conjugations in the singular change but, in the plural, the endings are nearly always predictable (-um, -ið and -a, respectively). Most English present verbs are regular and have only one change in ending (-s for third person singular). In most cases in Icelandic, the conjugation patterns remain regular across most verbs. The conjugation of a verb cannot be determined from its infinitive. Speakers must memorize which conjugation group a verb belongs to. Strong verbs fall into six groups augmented by reduplication verbs, each with exceptions (such as auxiliary verbs, the r-verbs, and the only verb in Icelandic that has been called 'totally irregular', ). There is a classification system for all verbs, with the paradigms going into the dozens. The simplification of inflections through person and number seen in Danish (and standard Norwegian & Swedish) with the adoption of the 3.p.s. is seen only in the first person in the conditional and in first person in the past tense where it is formed with suffix and with the first verb (to be) where em was replaced with er. Some Icelandic infinitives end with a -ja suffix. These verbs can be conjugated like -ur verbs, with the suffix lost in the first person singular. When conjugating -ja verbs, the single j must be removed, so ('to sing') would become ('I sing') in the first person singular and not (and is a strong verb (past tense ), so irregularities are to be expected). The j in itself is not a reliable indicator. Examples could be ('squeal'), which belongs to one class (singular, first person, , past tense ) versus ('count'), belonging to another class, (, past tense ). The six categories of Icelandic verbs are as follows: • -a verbs, which form the past indicative with an -aði ending; • -i verbs, which form the past indicative with a -ði, -di, or -ti ending; • strong verbs, which form the past indicative with no ending and a vowel shift; • ey-j-ur verbs, which form the past tense with an ending like the -i verbs but with a vowel shift; • hybrid verbs, which form the past tense like strong verbs (or with a vowel shift) and present tense like -i verbs or vice-versa; • preterite-present verbs, which form the present tense with the past tense ending of strong verbs. This classification, with its focus on inflectional features rather than etymologies, leaves very few irregular verbs. The verb 'valda' for example, becomes a totally regular one in the 2nd strong class. Tenses Strictly speaking, there are only two simple tenses in Icelandic, simple present and simple past. All other tenses are formed using auxiliary constructions (some of these are regarded as tenses, others as aspects). For example, the present continuous is formed thus: : + + infinitive verb : : I am learning (literal translation) I am to learn This construction is not usually used with stative verbs. For example, to sit would not use this construction. Instead, the simple present should be used (). The compound tenses are: • conditional • future • past • continuous • perfect • subjunctive • present • continuous • perfect • subjunctive Voice Icelandic possesses the middle voice in addition to both the active and passive. Verbs in the middle voice always end in -st; this ending can be added to both the infinitive and conjugated verb forms. For the conjugated forms, second and third person endings (i.e. -(u)r, -ð and -rð) must be removed, as must any dental consonants (ð, d and t). Compare the verb ('to change') to its middle voice forms, for example: The middle voice form of many verbs carries a slightly different meaning, and in some cases may carry a different meaning altogether. Some verbs survive only in their middle voice form, the other forms having been lost over time. The middle voice is generally used in the following situations to express: • Reflexivity—The middle voice form of a verb may be used in lieu of a reflexive pronoun, for example: ⇒ ('Þór gets dressed') • Reciprocity—Here the middle voice is used to mean 'each other', for example: ⇒ ('Þór and Stefán talk to each other') • An alternative meaning—As previously mentioned, some middle voice verbs carry different meanings than their counterparts. Examples include ('to come') becoming ('to get there') and ('to do') becoming ('to happen') • The passive—In certain situations, the middle voice may express an idea for which English would use the passive. For example, the phrase, , translates as 'The car cannot be seen'. Most often the middle voice is used in this context when there is no direct reference to any grammatical person. • To form verbs from nouns—The middle voice can also be used to form verbs from nouns. For example, from the noun which means 'a reckless person', comes the verb , meaning 'to act like a reckless person'. Subjunctive mood Like many other Indo-European languages, Icelandic has the subjunctive mood. It is often used to refer to situations with a degree of hypotheticity, but more specifically in the following situations: • In reported speech—It is used with the verb in the following sense: ('Jón says that she's coming'). • To express uncertainty—Used after the verbs ('to hope'), ('to wish'), ('to believe'), ('to expect'), ('to fear/to be afraid of'), and ('to suspect'): ('I hope that she gets better') • Interrogative sentences—Specifically after the verb ('to ask'): ('Jón asks whether you're going to eat with us') • With conjunctions—The subjunctive is used after the conjunctions ('unless'), ('although'), ('so that'), ('in order to') Adverbs Compared to other lexical categories, Icelandic adverbs are relatively simple, and are not declined, except in some cases for comparison. They can be constructed easily from adjectives, nouns and verbs. These derived adverbs often end in -lega (approximately equivalent to the -ly suffix in English): :''''—new ⇒ ''—lately'' (lit. newly) The adverbs ending in '''''' can be declined for comparison. :''''—danger ⇒ '→→', i.e. dangerously→more dangerously→most dangerously''. This is a regular way to form adverbs. Another way is to take the neutral nominative singular of an adjective and turn it into an adverb: :''''—gentle ⇒ ''—gently'', cf. —she sleeps gently Another way is taking the stem of an adjective and add an a: :''''—bad ⇒ ''—badly'', cf. —he behaves badly ( never takes the -lega suffix). Like in English, many common adverbs do not stick to these patterns but are adverbs in their own right: :''''—soon'' :''''—now'' :''''—often'' :''''—right away'' The basic adverbs of direction include: :''''—east'' :''''—north'' :''''—south'' :''''—west'' :''''—in'' :''''—from within'' :''''—from outside'' :''''—out'' Inn and út denote motion, going in and going out. ==Other word classes==

Prepositions In Icelandic, prepositions determine the case of the following noun. Some examples are given below: The case governed by prepositions depends on the context. The most frequent occurrence of this is determined by whether or not motion towards or away from is implied by the context: , , , and are all affected in this way. The following examples demonstrate this: : ''''—Jón goes to the restaurant'' Here the preposition governs the accusative case because specific motion towards/away from is implied, i.e. going to the restaurant. : ''''—Jón is at the restaurant'' In this example, the preposition governs the dative; here the situation is static with no motion towards or away from implied. , and all behave in the same way: : ''''—The cat crawls under the bed'' Here the use of the accusative implies that the cat was not under the bed before, but is on its way there now. : ''''—The cat is crawling under the bed'' Here, the use of the dative implies an unchanging situation. Now the cat is still crawling, but within the confines of under the bed. Note that to govern the accusative, the preposition must imply movement towards or away from something, that is to say a changing situation. If the situation is static, i.e., the same at the end as it was at the start, then the preposition governs the dative. ==Syntax==

Basic word order Icelandic word order is SVO (subject–verb–object), generally speaking, with the subject and verb inverted in questions and when a sentence begins with an adverb. However, the inflectional system allows for considerable freedom in word order. For poetical purposes, every combination is possible, even the rare OSV. The phrase (Bjarni killed Helgi) might well occur in, say, a ríma. Despite this, certain rules of syntax are relatively inflexible. For example, the finite verb must always be the second constituent of declarative sentences (this is a feature known as V2 word order, as is common to many Germanic languages). Take the example below (subject in yellow, verb in blue, object in red): : 1.500—The population was 1,500 Here the element (the past tense third person singular form of the verb , 'to be', i.e. 'was') is the second constituent of the sentence. If we change the sentence, however: : 1.500—In 2000, the population was 1,500 (lit. The year 2000 was the population 1,500) Here, is still the second constituent of the sentence, despite the fact that it is not the second word in the sentence. The prepositional phrase (highlighted in green) counts as one constituent, and so for the verb to be the second constituent, it must come after 2000 and not after . The subject and object of the verb then follow. An exception to this rule arises when forming questions by inversion: :''''—Stefán is hungry'' and when turned into a question: :''''—Is Stefán hungry?'' Here the subject and verb have been inverted to form a question, meaning the verb is the first constituent in the sentence as opposed to the second. This method of forming questions is used in many languages, including English. Questions As we have seen, questions can be easily formed by rearranging the order of the sentence from subject–verb–object to verb–subject–object. For example: : ''''—You speak Icelandic.'' can be made into a question as follows: : ''''—Do you speak Icelandic? (lit. Speak you Icelandic?) ( here merges with the verb and becomes '', a common shift when the pronoun is behind the verb) The inversion rule still applies when interrogatives are involved, which are simply added to the front of the sentence. The interrogatives in Icelandic are: • ''''—what/how?'' • —What are you doing? (lit. What are you to do?) • ''''—which/what?'' • —What dog? • ''''—who?'' • —Who are you? • ''''—how?'' • —How are you? (lit. How have you it?) • ''''—where/whither/whence?'' • —Where are you? • —Where are you going? (lit. Whither are you to go?) • —Where do you come from? (lit. Whence come you?) • ''''—when?'' • —When do you come? (lit. When come you?) • ''''—why?'' • —Why him? • —Why not? • —Why? • ''''—whether/which?'' • —''I don't know whether he's coming or not. (lit. Whether he comes, know I not.'') • —Which do you want? (lit. Which want you?, implying a choice between two alternatives.) However, interrogative pronouns () must decline with the verb that they modify, so the case of the pronoun changes depending on the verb. The meaning of a sentence does not change whether or is used; however they are used in a specific manner in Icelandic. Also of note, is rarely used. Causatives Icelandic has a causative construction that can feel quite alien to English speakers (but which is similar to constructions in other languages). The word is used to mean "let" or "make". In one use, it is quite similar to English. • ''''—She made me build the house.'' However, in another use, the intermediate subject is left out, but the second verb is still in the infinitive. • ''''—She had the house built. (lit. "She made build the house"; however, compare correct French and Dutch '') The syntax here seems somewhat similar to a use of the verb help in English, when speakers say She helped build the house. ==Sound shifts==

There are a number of sound shifts that occur in Icelandic, detailed below. The shifts occur very frequently across all word classes. For one of the most thorough books about the subject see . A-umlaut This is the oldest umlaut of all, attested in every Germanic language except, perhaps, Gothic. It comes in two varieties: :i ⇒ e (as for instance in ' vs. '). :u ⇒ o. Well known examples include ' (cf. English fowl) or (cf. German '). This umlaut is no longer productive. U-umlaut The U-umlaut occurs when a stem vowel a changes to ö because of a u in the next syllable. This affects a only, and not á or au. Some examples: :''''—talk ⇒ ''—(we) talk'' :''''—go ⇒ ''—(we) go'' If there is an intermediate syllable between the first a and the u, then the U-shift does not take place. Although u-umlaut used to be completely regular in that every a followed by u was changed to ö, now there are new u's that don't trigger it from the Old Norse -r ending. Everywhere -r didn't stand by a vowel an u was inserted in front of it, like in 'vanur from older vanr'''''. This happened after u-umlaut had already taken place and therefore doesn't trigger it, causing a bit of irregularity in the Modern Icelandic u-umlaut. U-umlaut is not to be confused with breaking, although they appear similar. Note that if there are two ''a's preceding the u, the first a becomes an ö and the second becomes a u''. An example: :''''—joy ⇒ ''—joys'' (dative, plural). Exceptions to this include several borrowings, for instance ''''—banana ⇒ ' (dative plural) and '—Arab ⇒ ' (also dative plural). Though ''' is still used as well. There is also the "phantom" U-umlaut where some words historically ended in an -u but dropped the vowel, the change still occurs, some examples: :''''-(masculine) ⇒ ''-(feminine) satiated'' :''''-(masculine) ⇒ ''-(feminine) Danish'' Historically, there were four more additional forms of the U-umlaut; these are no longer productive or have been reversed. I-umlaut The I-umlaut is slightly more complex, and consists of the following vowel changes: :a ⇒ e :á ⇒ æ :e ⇒ i :o ⇒ e :ó ⇒ æ :u ⇒ y (It sometimes appears as if o ⇒ y, but this is never the case. An example: ' (singular) ⇒ (plural) might give the impression of an I-umlaut, but the original vowel in was u changed to o' by the A-umlaut.) :ú, jú and jó ⇒ ý :au ⇒ ey The above effects of the I-umlaut are most visible in strong verbs. Take the verb ('to have'), for example: In the singular conjugation, the I-umlaut has caused the stem a to become an e. If we look at the plural conjugation however, we can see that the stem a remains intact here, with the notable exception of the 'við' form, where a U-umlaut has taken place (thanks to the -um ending). The I-shift affects verbs only in their singular conjugations. (The verb actually has two acceptable conjugations. The first is the above, the second goes , , .) Less known, non-productive and reversed changes include: :o ⇒ ø :ǫ ⇒ ø Other umlauts Historically, there were many more umlauts in Icelandic, including • R-umlaut • J-umlaut • G/K-umlaut • W-umlaut These are much more limited in scope, and operate more or less in the same way as the above-mentioned umlauts (i.e. have more or less the same effect). Having mentioned reversed or non-productive umlauts above, it remains to be stressed that the I- and U-umlauts are very much alive, both as a fixture of the declension system as well as being useful tools for composing neologisms. This applies to breaking as well. Elision A form of elision occurs when asking questions in the second person; the verb and have a tendency to merge to ease pronunciation. This is reflected in writing, and so one would more often encounter as opposed to the expanded form . The actual change undergone here is the transformation of the voiceless dental fricative into the voiced dental fricative . This elision rule applies to many verbs, some having their own special forms (for example , 'to be', has the form ). ==References==