How did Faroese gv and ggj develop? [+ other FO questions]

[Skomakar'n]

Don't just give me the name of some phonological process. That doesn't explain anything.
If you know the cause of these developments, try to give a lengthy and descriptive explaination.
How do so many words, all of a sudden, stick in not only a consonant, but a cluster, that was never there before?

In case one is not sure what I'm talking about, Faroese fairly often sticks the clusters gv and ggj into words where there previously was nothing.
To state some examples, I'll list some Faroese words that have done this, along with their Icelandic counterparts, which stay true to the Old Norse forms:

new; nýr - nýggjur
to see; sjá - síggja
island; ey - oyggj (oy remains in names)

shoe; skór - skógvur
gorge; gjá - gjógv

Often, these words will still have a few forms without these clusters present.
How in the world did they come about? It's fascinating, yet totally unexplainable to me.
Describe the process. In detail. Not in generic terms. The very process in the case of Faroese. Give me a timelapse with explainations.

Help!

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On a sidenote, some Faroese masculine nouns and masculine forms of adjectives, have gotten an -ur that wasn't there before.
I know that in some of these cases, analogy is probably reasonable, but in some cases...
Why would they just start adding it at some point? Once again, let me list Icelandic along with Faroese:

big; stór - stórur
fowl; fugl - fuglur
stone; steinn - steinur

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Actually, I might as well ask about the great regularisation of first person singular forms of verbs.
It's understandable for regular ones, but when dealing with irregular ones, that changes the stem in the present tense, it's weird.
Why and how would they suddenly start using a regular inflection if this form, when the changed stem still remains in second and third person?
I really don't see how this could happen like that...

For example, koma means to come, and in Icelandic, first person singular is kem, and second and third are kemur.
The latter still holds true for Faroese, but first person has become the regular komi.
Not only does the stem change from the old form, but <k> is not even pronounced the same way in front of <o> and <e>!

[Z500]

nm baleeted

[Åge Kruger]

Making an educated guess, I'd say hardening of intervocalic /j/ (or /j:/) to /g:j/, /w/ to /gv/.

IIRC, a similar change happened when going from Proto-Germanic to Proto-Northern Germanic and Proto-Eastern Germanic.

As for the rest, the first is down to agreement, the second is just plain old fashioned analogy. There is no great mystery there.

[Travis B.]

Making an educated guess, I'd say hardening of intervocalic /j/ (or /j:/) to /g:j/, /w/ to /gv/.

IIRC, a similar change happened when going from Proto-Germanic to Proto-Northern Germanic and Proto-Eastern Germanic.

As for the rest, the first is down to agreement, the second is just plain old fashioned analogy. There is no great mystery there.

These are my thoughts as well. As for the intervening steps, in those words, I'd presume something along the lines of, first, insertion of /j/ or /w/ in a sporadic fashion that agrees with the preceding vowel (with sjá becoming something like síá first); after insertion, said /j/ and /w/ would undergo further lengthening to /jː/ and /wː/, with the former prestopping to [ɟːj] before ultimately becoming [ɡːj] and the latter prestopping to [ɡw] before ultimately becoming [ɡv] due to the general change of /w/ to /v/. As for why more lengthening would have occurred for inserted /j/ than inserted /w/, I am not entirely sure, but that is another matter.

[Soap]

Old Norse has tryggr for "true" (masculine singular), from proto-Germanic *triww-, indicating that the change may have begun already even in Old Norse and then perhaps been undone by analogy in Icelandic. Encyclopedia Britannica describes it as a change of proto-Germanic -VwwV and -VjjV- to ggw and ggj, without mentioning whether it was unconditional or when it happened, although it does say it happened in both North Germanic and East Germanic, which would imply that it was probably before the split of those two unless it was an isogloss feature, and that it would have happened in Icelandic even if only to be undone later. (Reverse sound changes are not that uncommon, particularly when the original change created a gap in the phonology.)

[Travis B.]

Old Norse has tryggr for "true" (masculine singular), from proto-Germanic *triww-, indicating that the change may have begun already even in Old Norse and then perhaps been undone by analogy in Icelandic. Encyclopedia Britannica describes it as a change of proto-Germanic -VwwV and -VjjV- to ggw and ggj, without mentioning whether it was unconditional or when it happened, although it does say it happened in both North Germanic and East Germanic, which would imply that it was probably before the split of those two unless it was an isogloss feature, and that it would have happened in Icelandic even if only to be undone later. (Reverse sound changes are not that uncommon, particularly when the original change created a gap in the phonology.)

The only thing is that these changes occurred long before the Viking settlement of the Faroe Islands, much the less the clear separation of what we could call Old Faroese from Old Norwegian, as they were present in Proto-Norse. I doubt they would have remained active all the way until then, considering that /jː/ and /wː/ did not survive as such into Old Norse. Hence I would think that it would be more likely that these were rather later innovations in Faroese that only coincidentally paralleled previous developments in Proto-Norse.

[johanpeturdam]

I really can't add anything to what has already been said so far. But yes, examples 2 and 3 are definitely pure analogy. -R did vocalise (correct term?) to -ur, this ending then was added to word that originally didn't have -R: steinn -> steinur, and this was then apparently borrowed by the adjectives, maybe something along the lines of: stór steinn -> stór steinur -> stórur steinur. But this is pure speculation on my part. Sadly as you know, Faroese has a 300 year gap in written sources, so the only written sources of early Faroese is limited to roughly 1298-1536 (Seyðabrævið from 1298 being the oldest Faroese document), ie. the period referred to as Mediæval Faroese. I haven't read any of these texts, so unfortunately I can't help you further here.

There is however a verb, that does not have -i in 1st person singular present tense: At vita (to know), where the form is 'eg veit'.

The change in pronounciation of k infront of front vowels <e, i, y, ey> is simple palatalisation (correct term?) changing not only k but also g into affricates /tS/ and /dZ/.

I assume, that by regular and irregular you really mean weak and strong verbs, right? This classification is a bit problematic since there is conflicting usage of these terms. The book 'Mállæra' from ca. 1992-93 by Paulivar Andreasen and Árni Dahl, divides verbs into three main groups: verbs with sound changes (9 subgroups, the first 7 are strong verbs, the latter 2 weak), verbs without sound changes (3 subgroups, all weak) and irregular verbs. I don't know how Lockwood in 1977's An Introduction to Modern Faroese and how Þráinsson et.col. did in 2004's Faroese - An Overview and Reference Grammar grouped the verbs, so a little caution.