Icelandic grammar Icelandic is an inflected language with four cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. Icelandic nouns can have one of three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine or neuter. Nouns, adjectives and pronouns are declined in four cas ...

, the ri-verbs ( is, ri-sagnir) are the four

verb A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...

s in the language that have a ''-ri'' suffix in the

past tense The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the English verbs ''sang'', ''went'' and ''washed''. Most languages have a past tense, with some hav ...

as opposed to a suffix containing a

dental consonant A dental consonant is a consonant articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , . In some languages, dentals are distinguished from other groups, such as alveolar consonants, in which the tongue contacts the gum ridge. Dental c ...

such as /d/, /ð/, or /t/. Along with the (e.g. and ), they are the only verbs which inflect with a

Overview

The verbs are ("to heal, to grow"), ("to rub, to wipe"), ("to row") and ("to turn"). The principal parts of the ri-verbs are as following: The spelling ''sneri'' reflects the original pronunciation of these words, while ''snéri'' reflects the modern pronunciation. The Icelandic Ministry of Education considers both variants to be equally correct.

Origin

Historically, ''róa'' and ''snúa'' belonged to the seventh class of "strong" (irregular) verbs, which was the only class of verbs in Germanic that had retained the reduplication inherited from the

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...

perfect aspect. In Old Norse, the verb ''sá'' ("to sow") also belonged to this group, but it has become regular in Modern Icelandic. The past tense of these three verbs from

Proto-Germanic Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic branc ...

and Proto-North-Germanic was as follows: * *rōaną ("to row") - *rerō ("I rowed") * *snōaną ("to turn") - *sesnō > *seznō ("I turned") * *sēaną ("to sow") - *sesō > *sezō ("I sowed") Originally, all conjugation class 7 verbs showed this reduplication. In most verbs containing ''-ē-'' in the stem, this changed to ''-ō-'' through a process known as

ablaut In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut (, from German '' Ablaut'' ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and its ...

, which was common to all strong verbs. The change from ''s-'' to ''z-'' was due to

Verner's law Verner's law describes a historical sound change in the Proto-Germanic language whereby consonants that would usually have been the voiceless fricatives , , , , , following an unstressed syllable, became the voiced fricatives , , , , . The law was ...

, a historical

sound change A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chang ...

in the

Proto-Germanic language Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic languages, Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from ...

whereby voiceless

fricatives A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...

were

voiced Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer ...

when immediately following an unstressed syllable in the same word. Given that reduplicating prefix was originally unaccented, this caused voicing of /s/ to /z/. In Old Norse, this ''-z-'' was rhotacized to ''-r-'', creating the following forms: * ("to row") - , ("I rowed") * ("to turn") - , ("I turned") * ("to sow" < *sáa) - , ("I sowed") The forms with ''ø'' were older and resulted from a vowel rounding process ( u-umlaut) caused by word-final ''-ō'', which became ''-u'' in Old Norse before it was deleted altogether. Following this, the verbs adopted the endings of irregular verbs in the past tense, with ''-a'', ''-ir'', ''-i'' in the first, second and third person singular past, and later the original vowel ''e'' was restored. The verbs ''gróa'' and ''gnúa'' (''núa'' in modern Icelandic) were adapted to the forms of ''róa'' and ''snúa'' by analogy, although they did not begin with ''s-'' or ''r-'' (their past tenses in Germanic were *''gegrō'' and presumably *''gegnō''). In modern Icelandic, the first person singular ending was replaced by ''-i'' in all weak verbs, and the ri-verbs followed suit. The verb ''sá'' then eventually became weak, reducing the number of ri-verbs to the current four.

References

{{reflist Icelandic grammar

Overview

Origin

See also

References