Hreinn Benediktsson

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Hreinn Benediktsson

Hreinn Benediktsson (born October 10, 1928 in Stöðvarfjörður ; † January 7, 2005 in Reykjavík ) was an Icelandic linguist and professor at the University of Iceland in Reykjavík.

Life and education

Hreinn Benediktsson studied Indo-European and Comparative Germanic Linguistics in Oslo (1947–1950 and 1952–1954), at the Sorbonne in Paris (1951–1952), Freiburg (1955–1956) and Kiel (1956–1957) as well as general linguistics at Harvard ( Cambridge Massachusetts, 1957-1958). After receiving a master's degree from the University of Oslo in 1954 and his doctorate at Harvard in 1958, he was appointed Professor of Icelandic Linguistics at the University of Iceland in Reykjavík that same year . He worked there until his retirement in 1998, where he repeatedly held teaching and research activities at other universities: 1962 University of Wisconsin , Madison; 1968 Christian Albrechts University in Kiel ; 1973 University of Texas , Austin.

Research priorities

His main focus in teaching and research included the old Germanic languages, comparative studies of the Germanic and especially Scandinavian languages ​​and, in particular, the history of the Icelandic language. But also the philological preoccupation with Icelandic manuscripts was an important aspect of his teaching and research activities.

So he first reformed teaching in the field of linguistics, primarily by promoting training in general linguistics. As dean, he finally laid the foundations for today's education system at the university's faculty of philosophy.

Hreinn Benediktsson's personal research focus was on the historical phonology of Germanic and especially Icelandic. His studies on the system of ancient Germanic vowels and the history of the Icelandic vowel system are still foundational works for the modern comparative linguistics of Germanic.

Fonts (selection)

  • The vowel system of Old Icelandic. Its structure and development. (Dissertation) (1958)
  • Nokkur dæmi um áhrifsbreytingar í íslensku , Íslenzk tunga - Lingua Islandica, Reykjavík (1959)
  • Fyrsta málfræðiritgerðin í Snorra Eddu (AM 242, fol.), Reykjavík (1960)
  • Islandsk språk. In: Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder , 7 (1962)
  • The Life of St. Gregory and his Dialogues, Fragments of an Icelandic Manuscript from the 13th century. Editiones Arnamagæanæ, Series B, Vol. 4, Kaupmannahöfn (1963)
  • Some Aspects of Nordic Umlaut and Breaking. In: Language 39 (1963)
  • Old Norse Short e: One Phoneme or Two? In: Arkiv för nordisk filologi 79 (1964)
  • Early Icelandic Script as Illustrated in Vernacular Texts from the Twelfth an Thirteenth Centuries. Íslenzk handrit - Icelandic Manuscripts, Series in Folio, Vol. 2, Reykjavík (1965)
  • Indirect Changes of Phonological Structure: Nordic Vowel Quantity. In: Acta linguistica Hafniensia 11 (1968)
  • On the Inflection of the n-stems in Indo-European. In: Norsk tidsskrift for sprogvidenskap 22 (1968)
  • Aspects of Historical Phonology. In: The Nordic Languages ​​and Modern Linguistics, Proceedings of the International Conference of Nordic and General Linguistics, University of Iceland, Rvík, July 6–11, 1969 , Reykjavík (1970)
  • The First Grammatical Treatise. Introduction. Text. Notes. Translation. Vocabulary. Facsimiles. (= University of Iceland Publications in Linguistics ; 1). Reykjavík (1972)
  • The Common Nordic Vowel System. In: Scandinavian Studies 46 (1974)
  • Ísl. vera að + nafnh .: Aldur and uppruni. In: Nordiska studier i filologi och lingvistik, Festskrift tillägnad Gösta Holm on 60-årsdagen 8 July 1976. Lund (1976)
  • An Extinct Icelandic Dialect Feature: y vs. I, Dialectology and Sociolinguistics. In: Essays in honor of Karl-Hampus Dahlstedt, 19 Apr. 1977. Umeå (1977)
  • Relational Sound Change: 'vá'> 'vo' in Icelandic. In: Linguistics Method, Eassays in Honor of Herbert Penzl. The Hague (1979)
  • Nordic Umlaut and Breaking: Thirty Years of Research (1951-1980). In: Nordic Journal of Linguistics 5 (1982)
  • The Germanic Subjunctive: A Morphological Review. In: North-Western European Language Evolution NOWELE 1 (1983)
  • Linguistic Studies, Historical and Comparative. Reykjavík (2002)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andlát Hreinn Benediktsson. In: Morgunblaðið of January 8, 2005, obituary. Retrieved May 14, 2017 (Icelandic).
  2. ↑ Guðrún Þórhallsdóttir et al. (Ed.): Linguistic studies, Historical and Comparative by Hreinn Benediktsson. Institute of Linguistics, Reykjavík 2002. p. Xi.
  3. ↑ Guðrún Þórhallsdóttir et al. (Ed.): Linguistic studies, Historical and Comparative by Hreinn Benediktsson. Institute of Linguistics, Reykjavík 2002. p. Xii.
  4. ^ To honor Roman Jakobson: essays on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Vol. I. Mouton, The Hague et al. 1967. pp. 174-196.
  5. ↑ Guðrún Þórhallsdóttir et al. (Ed.): Linguistic studies, Historical and Comparative by Hreinn Benediktsson. Institute of Linguistics, Reykjavík 2002. pp. 50-73.
personal data
SURNAME Benediktsson, Hreinn
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Icelandic linguist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH October 10, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Stöðvarfjörður
DATE OF DEATH January 7, 2005
Place of death Reykjavík