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Thórdís Helgadóttir is an Icelandic poet, playwright, novelist, and short-story writer. Her work has earned the prestigious Ljódstafur Jóns dr Vor poetry prize and a nomination for the Icelandic Literary [...]

This paper explores the relationship between additional language (L2) literacy development and drama plays based on the experiences of adult refugees from Ukraine in Iceland. This inquiry is guided by the following questions: What are the learners' experiences and perceptions of drama classes in relation to their literacy development in Icelandic as an L2? What role might engaging in drama classes have when it comes to learners' sense of well‐being? We employ a multiliteracies perspective, which has pluralised the traditional view of literacy and offered new insight into literacy teaching and learning by integrating multimodal, multi‐sensorial, and critical practices into literacy education. The findings originate from a qualitative, interview‐based study with five Ukrainian learners of a refugee background in Iceland. Findings suggest that learning Icelandic through drama afforded the learners an opportunity to learn Icelandic in creative, engaging, and meaningful ways. Furthermore, learning Icelandic through drama supported the enactment and development of essential capacities for personal and professional growth, such as open‐mindedness, tolerance, respect, and collaboration. Many of the learners felt positively challenged to try out something new. This paper concludes with a discussion on the importance of critical, experiential L2 education that acknowledges learners' diverse lived experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the role of the North American-Icelandic children's newspaper "Sólskin" in preserving Icelandic culture and identity in the early 20th century. Topics include the emergence of the Icelandic-language press in North America to cater to the growing Icelandic migrant population, the diversity of publications within the North American-Icelandic press, and the significance of children's letters in Sólskin as a means of fostering a community of young readers and writers.

The article examines the history of the Icelandic linguistic purism (málhreinsunarstefna). For many years Icelanders have been known for their conservative attitude to any kind of foreign influence on their language. The country’s official language policy is to preserve the Icelandic language in an untouched form. To achieve that, Icelanders avoid borrowing words or grammatical structures from other languages. The study provides an outline of different undertakings aimed at preserving the Icelandic language, and presents the most important Icelandic organisations involved in language planning and key legal regulations in this area. It also describes Icelanders’ attitude to the impact of the English language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Scandinavian Studies today are divided into (at least) three areas, which should ideally also be represented by their own chairs at the universities, if one wants to cover the subject as broadly as possible. Likewise, the four languages, Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish, should be offered to a certain extent. Scandinavian Studies, however, belong to the so-called "small subjects", and financial and personnel resources are often limited. In addition, the federal states (Bundesländer) have an influence on the equipment of the universities. The subject of Scandinavian Studies can therefore be structured very differently at the individual universities. It is largely undisputed that foreign language skills are an important factor in promoting international understanding. As well, language skills are an absolute foundation in all aspects of a philological subject. Nevertheless, language teaching at universities is generally under pressure, and questions arise about its justification. This is true for both modern and ancient languages. In our article, we mainly describe the positions of Old and modern Icelandic within Scandinavian Studies, which differ greatly. This is mainly due to traditions within Scandinavian Studies and the institutions at which they are taught. Considerations are made regarding the legitimacy of these areas and their connections with other parts of the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extraction from relative clauses is generally taken to be unacceptable in Icelandic, unlike in the Mainland Scandinavian languages. Recent studies on Mainland Scandinavian show that the type of dependency as well as the embedding predicate matters for the acceptability of such extractions, and the study of spontaneously produced examples has improved our ability to create felicitous extraction contexts. The studies of Icelandic extraction predate these findings, and there is to date no study which systematically compares parallel sentences in Icelandic and Mainland Scandinavian. This article presents such a study, using two acceptability judgment experiments, one in Icelandic and one in Swedish, drawing on newly gained insights about fronting conditions in the two languages to create plausible contexts. The Icelandic participants rated extraction from relative clauses as unnatural, with a very large acceptability cost compared to in situ versions and good fillers. Extraction from að-clauses received mixed ratings, and local fronting was rated on a par with the in situ versions. In Swedish, extraction from relative clauses was rated as natural a majority of the time. There was no extraction cost in local fronting, extraction from att-clauses, or extraction from relative clauses in existential sentences, while extraction with other embedding predicates incurred some cost. No differences relating to the embedding predicate were seen in Icelandic. The study corroborates the view that extraction from relative clauses is unacceptable in Icelandic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates a second language (L2) speaker's use and learning of the Icelandic auxiliary verb ætla (pronounced /aihtla/) in the wild. This analytic focus is motivated by the L2 speaker's (Anna) own orientation to ætla as a learnable. We track Anna's use of ætla in naturally occurring social interaction over time. Anna first learns to use ætla to make requests in service encounters but this does not automatically transfer to other environments, suggesting an intricate relationship between ætla and the social action it is used to accomplish. The study illuminates (a) how this relationship between ætla expressions and the social actions they are used to accomplish develops over time, and (b) how Anna's increasingly diversified and productive varieties of ætla expressions co‐emerge with increasingly varied action accomplishment. Together, these two dimensions of L2 learning form the backbone of Anna's L2 grammar as an emergent accumulation of semiotic resources for social action. This serves as the backdrop for the article's implications for L2 education: (a) We promote the idea of exemplar‐based and interactionally situated L2 teaching, and (b) we call for increased awareness of situated and developing interactional competence and usage‐based processes and practices in the education of L2 teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study examines the degree to which adolescents in Iceland are judged by native Icelandic speakers to have a foreign accent both in Icelandic and in English, two languages that are learned under different conditions, as the community and school language, and through school and incidental exposure. Method: Fifty-eight adolescents, 27 with Icelandic as their first language (L1), 21 as their second language (L2), and 10 as one of two L1s read passages in Icelandic and English. Twelve untrained native speakers of Icelandic rated the degree of foreign accent, comprehensibility, and confidence level and selected from multiple-choice options what they thought was the L1 of the speakers. Results: Significant group differences were found in Icelandic but not in English. L2 speakers had a significantly greater foreign accent than the other groups in Icelandic; however, there was substantial overlap with some L2 speakers judged to be native and some L1 speakers judged as nonnative. All groups had a significantly greater accent in English than in Icelandic. Accent was judged more sternly than comprehensibility and confidence and related differently to vocabulary proficiency. Conclusions: Accent is typically not considered in studies of bilingual attainment in children for purposes of clinical assessment or educational placement but should be given closer attention. The study confirms previous findings that many young L2 learners have a detectable foreign accent. The overlap with L1 speakers also raises questions about the ideal of a native accent. More research is needed on how accent relates to bilingual and multilingual proficiency and on its impacts on comfort level, ease of communication, choice of language, and language exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study investigated Icelandic-speaking children's a cquisition of singleton consonants and consonant clusters. Method: Participants were 437 typically developing children aged 2;6-7;11 (years;months) acquiring Icelandic as their first language. Single-word speech samples of the 47 single consonants and 45 consonant clusters were collected using Málhljóðapróf ÞM (ÞM's Test of Speech Sound Disorders). Results: Percentage of consonants correct for children aged 2;6-2;11 was 73.12 (SD = 13.33) and increased to 98.55 (SD = 3.24) for children aged 7;0-7;11. Overall, singleton consonants were more likely to be accurate than consonant clusters. The earliest consonants to be acquired were /m, n, p, t, j, h/ in word-initial position and /f, l/ within words. The last consonants to be acquired were /x, r, r̥, s, θ, n̥/, and consonant clusters in word-initial /sv-, stl-, str-, skr-, θr-/, within-word /-ðr-, -tl-/, and word-final /-kl̥, -xt/ contexts. Within-word phonemes were more often accurate than those in word-initial position, with word-final position the least accurate. Accuracy of production was significantly related to increasing age, but not sex. Conclusions: This is the first comprehensive study of consonants and consonant cluster acquisition by typically developing Icelandic-speaking children. The findings align with trends for other Germanic languages; however, there are notable language-specific differences of clinical importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Even though traumatization is linked to substantially reduced health-related quality of life, help-seeking and service utilization among trauma survivors are very low. To date, there has not been available in Iceland a culturally attuned, self-reported measure on help-seeking barriers after trauma. This study aimed to translate and cross-culturally adapt the English version of Barriers to Help-Seeking for Trauma (BHS-TR) scale into the Icelandic language and context. Methods: The BHS-TR was culturally adapted following well-established and rigorous guidelines, including forward-backward translation, expert committee review, and pretesting through cognitive interviews. Two rounds of interviews with 17 female survivors of intimate partner violence were conducted using a think-aloud technique and verbal probing. Data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis, a combination of deductive and inductive approaches. Results: Issues with the BHS-TR that were uncovered in the study were classified into four categories related to general design, translation, cultural aspects, and post-trauma context. The trauma-specific issues emerged as a new category identified in this study and included concepts specific to trauma experiences. Therefore, modifications were of great importance—resulting in the scale becoming more trauma-informed. Revisions made to address identified issues improved the scale, and the process led to an Icelandic version, which appears to be semantically and conceptually equivalent to the original version; additionally, the results provided evidence of content validity. Conclusions: As a cognitive interview study, it adds to the growing cognitive interviewing methodology literature. Furthermore, the results provide essential insights into the self-report response process of trauma survivors, highlighting the significance of making health-related research instruments trauma-informed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medieval Icelanders defined their ideas about language, the composition of literature, grammar, and the relationship between Icelandic and Latin in a series of vernacular treatises. One such treatise, the fourteenth-century Fourth Grammatical Treatise, describes the forms and mechanics of writing skaldic poetry. In addition to rhetorical and grammatical information, it provides insight into to the Christian Latin material that was known or available to medieval Icelandic authors. Some of these texts, often neglected by scholars of literature, reflect ideas found in Gregory's Moralia in Iob, including his explanation of the four stages that sinners pass through as they move from temptation to mortal sin. It also reflects traditional exegesis of the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, in which Jesus is said to purify the water. These elucidations provide insight into the freedom, or lack thereof, that Icelandic authors had to translate and adapt Christian Latin terminology and concepts into vernacular texts and tightly structured skaldic verse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the recent sharp increase of L2 students in Reykjavik schools, allocation criteria for special L2 services were adopted that were based on length of residence and on whether children's home language was tonal or not tonal. This study set out to evaluate the appropriateness of these criteria, and to replicate previous findings of a smaller scale study of the Icelandic and nonword repetition performance of L2 learners of Icelandic. Participants: Included L2 learners and native speakers of Icelandic (n = 266) at three grade levels (grades 1–3, 5–6 and 8–9 (n = 266); the L2 learners included children from tonal and non tonal home languages. Method: All the children were administered a new test of Icelandic vocabulary and grammar developed expressly for Icelandic, a test of Icelandic nonword repetition, and a background information questionnaire. Results: L2 speakers in each age group performed significantly lower than L1 speakers in Icelandic vocabulary and grammar; less than a third of the L2 speakers performed within the normal L1 range, and over half performed more than 2 SD below this range. Low performers were particularly numerous in the oldest age group. NWR performance was related to age and Icelandic exposure, but scores were nevertheless uniformly high. No differences were found between children from tonal and non tonal home languages. The relationship between input and performance was complex, making fair allocation criteria based on background variables hard to formulate. Input variables (amount and timing of Icelandic exposure) were strongly related to input for the L2 group as a whole, and for the two older groups. However, the relationship was not significant for the youngest group. The pattern suggested that fast progress in Icelandic is related to higher age and recency of onset of L2 exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Icelandic language has a central role in defining Icelandic nationality. Given its importance in defining Icelandic nationality and as a precondition for citizenship, the article studies what learning the Icelandic language means for the growing numbers of immigrants who have arrived in Iceland in recent years. This ethnographic study presents immigrants’ perspectives on learning the language to be able to participate at work as well as gain access to the language community and Icelandic society in order to examine theory-based questions regarding processes of inclusion, exclusion and integration. Our study shows that although language is promoted as an important aspect in inclusion into Icelandic society, many of our participants who have attended classes but work mostly with other immigrants experience the language requirements instead as a boundary marker in terms of participation and belonging in Icelandic society.

In this paper, we argue that Applicatives can occur without verbs, more specifically, internal to nouns and adjectives, as previously proposed by Ingason (2015, 2016). We extend Ingason's theory and separate the noun-internal Root-Selecting Event Applicative of the Icelandic type (Applexp) from another Root-Selecting Applicative attested in Basque (referred to here as Applgoal). Evidence supporting this hypothesis comes from two empirical domains: (i) result/process nominals taking datives attested in the syntax of headlines, where no v is projected at all; and (ii) predicative configurations headed by adjectives and process nouns taking internal datives. On the basis of distributive and morphological evidence, as well as constituency tests, we argue that the presence of these internal datives is independent from v. On the other hand, we depart from Ingason's analysis in that the Root-selecting Applicative of the Basque type, although related to an event, does not strictly correspond to Pylkkänen's High Appl projection, but rather resembles the Low one in that it introduces goal/source datives. Finally, we show that the Appl projection introducing experiencer datives in Basque is in fact dependent on the projection of v. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses methods and outcomes of the analysis dealing with pronunciation of Czech phonemes and phonological clusters by the speakers whose first language is Icelandic. The practical analysis is based on the theoretical background that defines phonetics of Icelandic and the graphemes which Icelandic share with the Czech writing system. The aim of the research is to list potential problems of pronunciation that the Icelandic learners of Czech may face, and to collect the data for the pronunciation exercises aiming specifically at the speakers of the particular language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature has been central to Icelandic culture in the history of the nation. Icelandic immigrants in the U.S. created an original literature in their native tongue that, on the one hand, continued a rich Icelandic literary tradition going back to sagas and Edda texts, on the other hand, adopted New World themes and images and was influenced by literary forms inherent in American culture. American-Icelandic Literature exists as an independent cultural phenomenon and belongs to both cultures: American and Icelandic. Icelandic-American authors did not lose their national identity when writing in English as they preserved national narrative and poetic forms yet at the same time were part of American literature. National borders in the world literature are mainly defined by geographic and linguistic factors. The concept of national literature very often draws on the concept of national identity, literature being one of the most important components of cultural self-identification. Usually, immigrant literature intended for a specific immigrant community, is interesting only to this community and is not seen as part of national culture in the home country. But in the case of Icelandic-American literature, it is possible to say that this literary tradition did not break its connections with Iceland, and regardless of the fact that Icelandic-American authors were writing in English, their works became part of Icelandic cultural heritage

Using map task data, this paper investigates the intonation of polar questions in North American (heritage) Icelandic, and compares it to the intonation of polar questions in Icelandic as spoken in Iceland and in North American English as spoken in Manitoba, Canada. The results show that intonational features typical of Icelandic polar questions are present to a considerable extent in heritage Icelandic. Furthermore, intonational features typical of North American English polar questions can frequently be observed in heritage Icelandic, too. In addition, there is a tendency for intonational features typical of Icelandic polar questions to show up in North American English polar questions produced by speakers of heritage Icelandic more often than in North American English polar questions produced by speakers without Icelandic heritage. Focusing on intonation, the present study adds to the evidence for (bidirectional) prosodic interference between a heritage language (here moribund Icelandic) and the dominant language (here North American English). * [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a number of languages, agreement in specificational copular sentences can or must be with the second of the two nominals, even when it is the first that occupies the canonical subject position. Béjar & Kahnemuyipour (2017) show that Persian and Eastern Armenian are two such languages. They then argue that ‘NP2 agreement’ occurs because the nominal in subject position (NP1) is not accessible to an external probe. It follows that actual agreement with NP1 should never be possible: the alternative to NP2 agreement should be ‘default’ agreement. We show that this prediction is false. In addition to showing that English has NP1, not default, agreement, we present new data from Icelandic, a language with rich agreement morphology, including cases that involve ‘plurale tantum’ nominals as NP1. These allow us to control for any confound from the fact that typically in a specificational sentence with two nominals differing in number, it is NP2 that is plural. We show that even in this case, the alternative to agreement with NP2 is agreement with NP1, not a default. Hence, we conclude that whatever the correct analysis of specificational sentences turns out to be, it must not predict obligatory failure of NP1 agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Based on the analysis of corpus data, this paper investigates the prosodic phrasing of the Icelandic parenthetical comment clause (CC) held ég (‘believe/think I’; I think, I believe) and relates the results to current prosodic theory. The main findings are as follows. (i) A variety of intonational phrasing patterns is possible with CCheld ég, allowing both for prosodic separation such that the CC is phrased in its own Intonational Phrase (IP), and prosodic integration, such that the CC is phrased in one IP with surrounding material. (ii) Prosodic integration is by far the more common pattern. (iii) The prosodic phrasing of CCs is related to their meaning via prominence. In particular, CCs which can be argued to have conventional implicatures (CI) semantics are prosodically prominent and phrased separately; CCs whose primary function is one of mitigation are unstressed and integrated. (iv) The observed intonational phrasing patterns can be accounted for in terms of the interaction of the syntax‐prosody interface constraint Match clause with prosodic markedness constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents a novel analysis of Stylistic Fronting (SF) in Icelandic. It is argued that SF is not a head‐movement operation, but rather phrasal movement to subject position. Typically, however, independent factors require evacuation movements prior to raising, in which case the fronted phrase moves as a remnant category. It is shown that this approach can account for a variety of otherwise puzzling properties of SF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an analysis of tracking data collected over eight years on 43,000 users onIcelandic Online(IOL), seven open, guided online courses in Icelandic as a second language. The main objective in this study is to (a) map out retention for all theIOLcourses, (b) compare retention on the same course delivered in three different modes; blended learning mode, distance learning mode, and self-directed mode, and (c) to investigate overall engagement patterns onIOL. The findings reveal low completion rates that vary by mode of delivery, identifying blended learning mode as most effective in retaining students. The results also reveal regular attrition patterns across all modes of delivery, with sharp drop-outs initially and concentrations of drop-outs at certain junctures in the courses. The drop-out patterns revealed in this study called for a re-evaluation of earlier parameters by which retention is measured, and especially what it means to ‘complete a course’. Instead of considering course completion in light of 100% coverage, the findings show considerably higher retention onIOLwhen the parameters for course completion are adjusted to for instance 90% coverage of course content. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Summary: This article presents two essays by the renowned Icelandic manuscript collector Árni Magnússon (1663‒1730): De gothicæ lingvæ nomine [On the expression ‘the Gothic language’] and Annotationes aliqvot de lingvis et migrationibus gentium septentrionalium [Some notes on the languages and migrations of the northern peoples]. The two essays are here edited and published in their original language, Latin. Moreover, an English translation is also presented for ease of access. After a short introduction (§ 1), a historical overview of the academic strife between Denmark and Sweden is given (§ 2). Subsequently (§ 3), Árni Magnússon’s life and work are presented. In the following Section (§ 4), the manuscript containing the two essays, AM 436 4to, is described. The two essays are then edited and translated in Section 5. In the last Section (§ 6), the two works are commented and Árni Magnússon’s scholarly thought evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vocabular Clarity is a proposed restriction on the behaviour of inflectional classes and affixes grounded in the idea of synonymy avoidance. The proponents of Vocabular Clarity claim that it holds true for Icelandic and Faroese nominal inflections. In this article, data from these languages is examined and difficulties which have not been previously addressed are pointed out. It is argued that the Vocabular Clarity approach is somewhat vaguely specified. In particular, it needs a clear operational method for distinguishing affixes and stem allomorphy. Without this, it remains uncertain whether it makes any testable predictions. The paper shows that while the theory is intuitively appealing, it is-even under fairly generous assumptions-difficult to reconcile with the insular Scandinavian data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses Jón Ólafsson from Grunnavík (1705-1779), a prominent spokesperson for purism and language cultivation in eighteenth-century Iceland. Jón’s attitude towards his mother tongue is investigated here by discussing several representative texts that he wrote: his youthful translation of Barthold Feind’s Cosmographia (1727, AM 958 4to); a Latin lecture on the Icelandic language (written no later than 1730, AM 1013 4to, ff. 68r-76r); the introduction to Jón’s orthographic treatise (ca. 1733, AM 435 fol.); a purist wordlist (ca. 1736, AM 1013 4to, f. 37v); and Hagþenkir, a treatise on education (1737, JS 83 fol.). After a short introduction, there follows a brief overview of Jón Ólafsson’s life, learning, and scholarly publications. The next section examines Jón’s attitude towards his mother tongue as reflected in the aforementioned texts. In the concluding section, the issue of language cultivation in - eighteenth-century Iceland is addressed. In particular, it is argued that in Jón’s foster father, Páll Vídalín (1667-1727), there exists a link between Jón Ólafsson and the ‘father’ of Icelandic purism, Arngrímur Jónsson the Learned (1568-1648). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Icelandic is basically a “straight-have-perfect” language, where constructions withbe+ participle are virtually restricted to stative expressions likeer farinn“is gone”. But since around 1600, Icelandic has been developing a new perfect consisting of the verb “be” together with the adjective (or participle)búinn+ infinitive. The wordbúinnnormally means “finished, done” so it is not surprising that the earliest examples of this construction typically involved transitive telic predicates and animate agentive subjects and had a clear resultative reading. Gradually, the construction developed into a more general perfect, which today can be used with predicates of different types and have a universal and even to some extent experiential (existential) reading. This development is traced and the restrictions on this new perfect in the modern language are described. It is shown that this new perfect has been gaining ground for centuries and is apparently still on the rise, as can be seen from the fact that it is more popular among young speakers than with the older generations. It is also acquired early and apparently more frequent in child language than the standardhave-perfect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to account for the distribution of Icelandic adjectival inflection in a manner that also captures a problematic case that has not been satisfactorily analyzed in the literature. It is argued that weak inflection is triggered if the adjective is c-commanded by a feature [ definite]. Strong inflection occurs precisely if weak inflection is not triggered. This implementation accounts for the occurrence of strong inflection on predicative adjectives and adnominal adjectives in indefinite noun phrases, but moreover allows us to account for an unexpected pattern in Icelandic where a strongly inflected adjective occurs in a definite noun phrase. It is argued that, in this case, the adjective is not c-commanded by the definite article, but, in fact, merged outside DP. This rather unorthodox assumption motivated on morpho-syntactic grounds makes a number of syntactic and semantic predictions. In particular, adjectives that are merged outside DP are expected to modify not simply an NP (of type $${<}\hbox {e,t}{>}$$ ), but actually a referential expression/an individual of type e. The discussion of four instances of that strongly inflected pattern-appositives, expressives, positional predicates and little partitives-provides various kinds of evidence and shows that these expectations are indeed borne out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Wood 2012, I argued that object extraposition of infinitive clauses in Icelandic reveals a problem for the movement theory of control (MTC). Object extraposition involves a pronoun that, when present, prevents any movement out of the extraposed clause, but allows the control dependency. Drummond and Hornstein (2014) claim that the facts discussed in Wood 2012 are compatible with the MTC. In this reply, I show that their response is based on a misunderstanding of how Icelandic object extraposition works and that the problem observed in Wood 2012 remains. I also present a novel argument against the MTC by showing that Drummond and Hornstein's account of 'promise'- type verbs cannot be extended to Icelandic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existence of the Icelandic Book of Joseph and Aseneth was first brought to scholarly attention in M.R. James's introduction to Batiffol's Latin edition of 1889. Since then commentators have continued to include the Icelandic tradition in lists of translated versions (often by the shelfmark provided by M.R. James, BL Add MS 11068). However, until now the Aseneth contained in BL Add MS 11068 has remained unedited. This article provides an annotated edition and translation which presents the Icelandic Aseneth in comparison with the exemplar from which it was translated, namely Hans Mogensen's Danish version of 1580. Most importantly, the Icelandic translator, Ami Halldôrsson (1630-1687), made an original contribution to the tradition, authoring a unique account of the death ofAseneth from grief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Icelandic language has a central role in defining Icelandic nationality. Given its importance in defining Icelandic nationality and as a precondition for citizenship, the article studies what learning the Icelandic language means for the growing numbers of immigrants who have arrived in Iceland in recent years. This ethnographic study presents immigrants' perspectives on learning the language to be able to participate at work as well as gain access to the language community and Icelandic society in order to examine theory-based questions regarding processes of inclusion, exclusion and integration. Our study shows that although language is promoted as an important aspect in inclusion into Icelandic society, many of our participants who have attended classes but work mostly with other immigrants experience the language requirements instead as a boundary marker in terms of participation and belonging in Icelandic society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legislation linking language course attendance and passage of a language test for residence visas and citizenship, respectively, was enacted in Iceland in the early 2000s. Curricular guidelines and the language test were developed as a result. Research in other countries suggests such structures cause teachers to createde factopolicies aligning with legislative goals. We explore here whether school administrators and teachers of adult foreigners find the curricular model and examination have affected their materials and practices. Results of our study suggest that the diffuse nature of governance of language schools for adult learners and an ideology endorsing autonomy allow administrators and teachers to assert more independence from thede jurepolicy than is found elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims at providing a CVCV analysis of the Icelandic syllabification phenomena and the distribution of vocalic quantity. Two syllabification algorithms are reported to exist in Icelandic: lexical and post-lexical (Árnason 1998, 2011). The article will focus on the post-lexical algorithm, which determines vowel length in derivatives with class 2 suffixation, compounds, and across word boundaries. A modified model of CVCV will be argued for, which combines the insights from Scheer's (2004, 2012) and Cyran's (2003, 2010) model. It will be proposed that phonological computation applies only once to the whole string (preferably the whole sentence) and that the activity of the interface boils down to representational intervention (in accordance with Scheerian Direct Interface). It will be proposed that manipulation of Final Empty Nuclei (at least in the form of distributing parametric government) is a possible interface operation, as assumed in earlier CVCV (Scheer 2004). The complex pattern of two syllabification algorithms in Icelandic arises via an intricate interplay of sonority profiles of consonants and the needs of intervening empty nuclei (some of which are parametrically governed, while some others are not). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the style that William Morris first developed for his translations from Old Norse between 1868 and 1876, and further refined in the early 1890s during his work on The Saga Library. After demonstrating how Morris gradually honed and insisted upon an ideal of literalness in his saga translations, it proposes that the style was intended to bridge the temporal and cultural gap between the imagined medieval Icelandic society that he celebrated in the sagas and the degraded British one that he lamented in the present. The article goes on to argue that Morris's increasingly diligent attempt to reconnect his readers with an erstwhile kindred culture through his translations from Old Norse may have been undermined by a misjudgement on his part of what his audience would recognize as familiar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Icelandic there are two different types of modifiers within compounds, inflected and uninflected, and the inflected modifiers appear to be peripheral to the uninflected ones. In this article, it is proposed that this is an effect of compounding being required to combine elements of the same type or size. The inflected modifiers, containing more structure than the uninflected ones, cannot be merged at the same level as uninflected modifiers. This article also explores two other issues of domainhood within the compound. One being the establishment of domains for morphophonological processes, where it is proposed that the boundaries of morphophonological domains are determined by the edge of the extended projection of the root. The second one being that of special meaning, where it is shown that exocentric compounds with inflected modifiers have exclusively non-compositional meaning, whereas exocentric compounds with uninflected modifiers could have either compositional or non-compositional meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject-predicate agreement system in Icelandic appears to show sensitivity to the morphological marking of case, instead of the syntactic position of the argument to be agreed with. Furthermore, agreement with the Nominative object appears to be optional and may be disrupted by an intervening Dative argument. This article contributes to the existing discussion by proposing a new empirical generalization about the nature of Long-Distance Agreement ( lda), i.e., agreement which occurs in a bi-clausal environment, and its interaction with Dative interventions. Based on the new data from an Icelandic variety called Icelandic B, I argue that lda takes place only if the intervening Dative argument undergoes independently motivated A-movement to the edge of vP. The core idea is that the locus of agreement with the Nominative object is v-its Case licensor: lda arises only if v can probe the Nominative argument in the absence of the Dative argument. The proposed analysis thus accounts for the Icelandic patterns in a strictly derivational and locality-based manner, without any recourse to post-syntactic operations, optionality in agreement or significant modifications in the theory of $$\phi $$ -feature Agree, thus restoring the Icelandic agreement system to normalcy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]