Om Rökstenens ortografi

Abstract

Bo Ralph has recently in his publication on the Rök stone argued for a new and different analysis of some aspects of the phonology and orthography of the inscription. He claims that in the words faþiʀ ’father’, histʀ ’horse’ and fatlaþʀ ’buckled’ the last rune ʀ is used analogically (instead of r) to express the morphological category of nominative masculine singular. However, there is a simpler phonological explanation for this: The Rök stone represents a stage of language development where the palatal assimilation ir > iʀ has occurred, but not yet assimilation from a dental or alveolar consonant resulting in ʀ > r. This claim of Ralph in one instance has bearing on the interpretation of the text. He suggests that the word miʀ should be understood as mæʀʀ ’famous’. The expected form however should be mærr with an assimilation rʀ > rr, but Ralph also here suggests that the palatal ʀ is a morphological nominative marker, a very unlikely claim without the sup-port from faþiʀ, histʀ and fatlaþʀ. It is also improbable that the i-rune in miʀ should be understood as æ, since this elsewhere in the inscription is written as ɑ (with the possible exception of histʀ ’horse’, which however could be explained as hestʀ < hæistʀ). Ralph describes the orthography of the Rök stone as basically phonematic and morphologizing, but it does not differ in principle from the usual runic orthography before the introduction of dotted runes, a broad phonetic orthography.