# Icelandic: Blaðamannaverðlauin



## Alxmrphi

Hi, 

Quick question.
I understand Icelandic combines words and the first is either in the accusative or the genitive, but I'm a bit confused, or, just want to check something

Blaðamaður - journalist
Verðlaun - prize / award

So in this combination I think it could be "Journalist's award", but I wondered why it wasn't written in a way like... "Blaðamannanna verðlaun" (The journalists' awards)

But as a combination, maybe it means "Award winning journalists" ?
I thought this at first but in the context of the sentence it looks like it should be "Journalist's award"

*Blaðmannaverðlaunin voru afhent í dag. Blaðmaður ársins var valin Þóra Kristín Ásgeirsdóttir fyrir.....*

*<*_The journalist's awards?_*> were handed out today. This year's journalist was Kristín** Þóra Kristín Ásgeirsdóttir**, chosen for...*

Is it just treated as one word in Icelandic? We just express it in English with two words?

Thanks for any help.
- Alex


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## Karkwa

Hello, Alex.

I hope you excuse my inability to express myself properly, I'm not very good at explaining Icelandic grammar in another language.

To answer your question; yes, it is treated as one word in Icelandic. And yes, I believe that you use two words in English to express the same word. If I were to translate it to English I think I would say "the award of journalists".

The word 'blaðamenn' is in genitive because 'verðlaun' belongs to them. Thus: the award (verðlaunin) of journalists (blaðamanna)". Combined it makes blaðamannaverðlaunin. Please note that the word 'verðlaun' only exists in the plural form.

If you have any more questions, don't be afraid to ask. I have no idea if I have explained this properly or not. This is weird, even to me.


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## Wilma_Sweden

Do all compound nouns have the first one in the genitive in Icelandic, or just some of them? I'm just wondering because in Swedish, there is sometimes a genitive, like parkering*s*vakt (parking attendant), and sometimes not, like journalistpris (journalist award).

/Wilma


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## hanne

Is that really a genitive in parkeringsvakt/-vagt? I thought it was rather... well, something else... :? (In school they called it "binde-s" - connecting s. Btw we also have connecting e in Danish - not sure if the rest of you do - can't think of any examples right now...)
Apparently there are no general rules in Danish for s in compound nouns: http://www.dsn.dk/oss_faq.htm#Med_eller_uden_s_(fuge-s) (which to me indicates that it has nothing to do with genitive, but I may be wrong on that)


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## Wilma_Sweden

hanne said:


> Is that really a genitive in parkeringsvakt/-vagt?


Ooops! I've always thought of it as such, but now that you challenge it, I shall have to look into it properly! I'll be back...

/Wilma


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## Alxmrphi

> If you have any more questions, don't be afraid to ask. I have no idea if I have explained this properly or not. This is weird, even to me.


Thanks Karwka!! You explained it very well and answered my question!
Thanks for your help

Hi Wilma,

In Icelandic when words are combined, the first one is either in the accusative or the genitive.

*Gangbraut* (f) - Road crossing
*Gangbraut**arljós* - Traffic lights........... (Gangbrautar = genitive)

*Flug* (n) - Flight
*Völlur* - Field
*Flugvöllur *- Airport....................(Flug = accusative)

Maybe it's the same as Swedish, do get back to us Wilma!


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## Wilma_Sweden

The linking elements, called interfix by the linguists, that are used to combine nouns into compound nouns in Swedish, appear to be historic case endings, usually genitive. The original genders of the words and their respective case endings would account for the various elements, i.e. -e-, -o-, -u-, -s-. Examples: skatt*e*kontor (tax office), kvinn*o*klinik (women's clinic), gat*u*kontor ('street office', i.e. city council office for street maintenance) and järnväg*s*station (railway station).The *s* suffix then evolved into two functions: 1) standard genitive marker for all genders and 2) the most common interfix for compounds.

There are clearly defined rules and patterns for how compound nouns are formed, i.e. whether to insert an -s- or not. I won't go into too much detail as it is thoroughly explained in this article (p. 4-9), suffice to say that it depends on the amount of syllables and morphemes of the first part, and there are phonetic rules to avoid difficult consonant clusters, journalistpris being one example - journalist*s*pris  would be very difficult to pronounce. Remember that Swedish compound nouns should always be written as one continuous word, not two or more as in English. 

/Wilma


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## hanne

Interesting reading, thx for the article Wilma.
Particularly interesting considering the quote from Dansk Sprognævn (the Danish language authority) from the link I gave before: "Man kan ikke give generelle regler for hvornår der skal fuge-s i en sammensætning, og hvornår der ikke skal." I can't imagine that the Swedish explanation doesn't apply to a large extent to Danish though.

It was also interesting to note how many differences there actually are between Danish and Swedish on the use of -s- (but I still believe that the Swedish explanation is mostly valid for Danish as I just said). I guess we have different opinions on when it's phonetically inconvenient to use it...
Some examples that popped into my mind while reading, if anyone's curious:
havfugl, havbrise
bjergvæg, bjergvej, sportsinteresseret, moderkage (apart from modersmål, moder never seems to take -s- in Danish)
bilhjul-vognhjul, alpetop-bjergtop

Also, what Wilma points out "Remember that Swedish compound nouns should always be written as one continuous word, not two or more as in English." - goes for Danish too, and all the Scandinavian languages in general if I'm not mistaken.


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## dinji

Alex_Murphy said:


> Thanks Karwka!! You explained it very well and answered my question!
> Thanks for your help
> 
> Hi Wilma,
> 
> In Icelandic when words are combined, the first one is either in the accusative or the genitive.
> 
> *Gangbraut* (f) - Road crossing
> *Gangbraut**arljós* - Traffic lights........... (Gangbrautar = genitive)
> 
> *Flug* (n) - Flight
> *Völlur* - Field
> *Flugvöllur *- Airport....................(Flug = accusative)
> 
> Maybe it's the same as Swedish, do get back to us Wilma!


In Icelandic, as in all the Proto-Languages preceeding it, all the way to Proto-Indo-European, the first element is either in the genitive case or in a particular stem form, which sometimes, but not always, coincides with accusative (or nominative).

Thus the word for 'soul' carries in Greek a feminine ending _he: psykhe: _
but in the compound word a shorter stem _psykho-_ (not identical with accusative) enters into the picture, as in _psykhología_. In a perfectly similar way the Icelandic feminines _jörd_ 'earth', _sök_ 'case' and _gröf_ 'grave' appears in their stem forms (not accusative) in the compounds _jarðvegur_, _sakleysi_ and _grafskrift_.

In other cases the compounds are formed with the genitive case as in _grafarmark_.

Wilma has explained the Swedish system, which still bears more traces of this original one explained above than Danish does: thus _gatukontor _(historical genitive case) but _gatstenar_ (stemform) and _kyrkomöte_ (historical genitive case) but _kyrkkaffe_ (stemform). Note that the historical accusatives would be _gatu-_ and _kyrko-_ as well, so the words _gatstenar_ and _kyrkkaffe_ constitute counter evidence to the accusative-hypothesis, just as _jarðvegur_, _sakleysi_ and _grafskrift_ effectively do.

In Danish the "interfix" _-e-_ must presumably have multiple origins, it may be any of the historical genitives not carrying an -s, including masculine -a, feminine -u, feminine -ar, and plural -a. All of these would have been weakened to the same single neutral vowel subject to regular Danish sound rules.


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## Wilma_Sweden

hanne said:


> havfugl, havbrise
> bjergvæg, bjergvej, sportsinteresseret, moderkage (apart from modersmål, moder never seems to take -s- in Danish)
> bilhjul-vognhjul, alpetop-bjergtop


Swedish versions:
havsfågel, havsbris (all hav-compounds have -s- except havtorn)
bergvägg, bergsväg, sportintresserad, moderkaka, modersmål (there are a few moders- but many more moder-)
bilhjul-vagnshjul, alptopp-bergstopp

There are certainly differences between Danish and Swedish usage, but it's possible, as hanne suggests, that the Swedish usage patterns to some extent could apply to Danish, too, as I, like hanne, can't believe that the Danish usage is completely random. I'm now also curious about the Norwegian situation.

/Wilma


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## dinji

In Swedish, the compounds preserve many obsolete genitive forms. Thus the normal genitives for historiacal n-stems like _gata_ and _kyrka_ are today _gatas_ and _kyrkas_. The same goes for historical masculines like _backe_ and _stake_ which are today _backes_ and _stakes_. The new forms are formed in rather recent centuries through analogy (in fact the s-gentive has generalised itself throughout the paradigms (much like in English in fact) even into the plural where it never belonged in the first place).

In compounds the historical genitives seem very resistant. In fact I have problems to come up with even a few cases, where a modern non-etymological s-genitive would have entered into the first element of a compound. The only one I can make up is _modersmål,_ _modersmjölk, __moderskärlek_. Here I suspect that the use of s-genitive is older than in the n-stems.

Can anyone come up with other cases in Swedish, where a non-ethymological -s (taht is a word were another genitive ending that -s has been used in Old Swedish) has entered into this position of a compound?

Since the Danes interpret their *-s-* as an interfix not marking genitive case at all, it should be expected that this _binde*-s-*_ may easily be used on words where the historical genitive ending was something else. Can we have examples for that, like: _kirkes-, gades- bakkes-_ etc. or _jords-, sags-, gravs-_ etc.?


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## hanne

dinji said:


> Since the Danes interpret their *-s-* as an interfix not marking genitive case at all, it should be expected that this _binde*-s-*_ may easily be used on words where the historical genitive ending was something else. Can we have examples for that, like: _kirkes-, gades- bakkes-_ etc. or _jords-, sags-, gravs-_ etc.?


Sag- usually has an s in compounds (e.g. sagsnummer, sagsbehandling, sagsmappe, but sagsøger and sagprosa are the two exceptions I could find).
The other suggestions are all without -s- in compounds (kirketårn, gadehjørne, bakketop, jordvold, gravplads) - I can't think of a single example otherwise (and neither can Retskrivningsordbogen). In fact I can't think of anything ending with -e that would take an -s- in compounds.


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## dinji

I don't think we have any compound with _sak-s-_ in Swedish.

As regards a possible compound xx-es-yy we might perhaps even find ethymologically correct examples in words deriving from Proto-Norse *_-ja-_stems. The Old Swedish genitive of _herde_ (Danish _hyrde_) should have been _hirdhes_ and could have produced the first element of a compound. 

A corresponding case in Icelandic is just discussed in the other thread: _Alþing*is*hús_

May be the words _herde-stund_ and _herde-stav_ conceal an origin of two _-ss-_es _herdes-stund_ and _herdes-stav_ ??


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## Wilma_Sweden

dinji said:


> I don't think we have any compound with _sak-s-_ in Swedish.
> 
> As regards a possible compound xx-es-yy we might perhaps even find ethymologically correct examples in words deriving from Proto-Norse *_-ja-_stems. The Old Swedish genitive of _herde_ (Danish _hyrde_) should have been _hirdhes_ and could have produced the first element of a compound.
> 
> A corresponding case in Icelandic is just discussed in the other thread: _Alþing*is*hús_
> 
> May be the words _herde-stund_ and _herde-stav_ conceal an origin of two _-ss-_es _herdes-stund_ and _herdes-stav_ ??


This seems unlikely if you look at the SAOB(*). However, there are plenty of old compounds with herda-, no longer in use or replaced with herde-, again according to the SAOB. Genitive endings seem to have been -a or -as. Other examples of -a are in bergakungen, själasörjare, jordabalk. 

I agree about sak: I've found no trace of a genitive containing s, and presumably for this reason, -s- never appeared as an interfix.

(*) SAOB: Svenska Akademiens OrdBok, online (A-Trivsel) at: http://g3.spraakdata.gu.se/saob/ 
It's very useful for etymological and historic purposes, but sometimes difficult to interpret.

/Wilma


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## dinji

Wilma_Sweden said:


> This seems unlikely if you look at the SAOB(*). However, there are plenty of old compounds with herda-, no longer in use or replaced with herde-, again according to the SAOB. Genitive endings seem to have been -a or -as. Other examples of -a are in bergakungen, själasörjare, jordabalk.
> 
> I agree about sak: I've found no trace of a genitive containing s, and presumably for this reason, -s- never appeared as an interfix.
> 
> (*) SAOB: Svenska Akademiens OrdBok, online (A-Trivsel) at: http://g3.spraakdata.gu.se/saob/
> It's very useful for etymological and historic purposes, but sometimes difficult to interpret.
> 
> /Wilma


_Herde_ may have been a bad example since it obviously has been mixed up over history with masculine n-stems. Also I see from Wessén that the _-ja-_ stems have at least 3 different subgroupings and the etymologically expected genitive _*-is*_ only belongs to one of them: example words _öris, läkis_ and a number of proper names.

Since the singular genitive of _berg_ is _bergs_ (the word belongs to a very regular declination), _berga-_ obviously is a plural genitive ('the king of/from the mountains'), a just as valid form for a first element as well. _Själa-_ and _jorda-_ could formally just as well be singular or plural because the forms could have been identical (the singular had in Old Swedish the etymological ending _*-a(r)*_, but the _*-r*_ seems from the beginning to have been optional).


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