Den normative ortografi og udtalen. Skitse til en typologi

Abstract

The paper deals with the relations between Danish pronunciation and the so-called ‘normative orthography’, i.e. the official Danish writing rules as laid down by the authorities in orthographic directives since 1889. The specific aim of the paper is to suggest a model for defining and describing the different kinds of normative orthography and their mutual relations. The criteria used for placing the orthographic rules in the model are (a) whether the rule is dependent on pronunciation or not, and (b) whether the resulting orthography (i.e. the prescribed letters) are linguistic signs (inflectional endings, morphemes) or non-signs. The model thus consists of four types of normative orthography, i.e. autonomous expression orthography (Danish: autonom udtryksortografi), autonomous content orthography (Danish: autonom indholdsortografi), mirrored expression orthography (Danish: spejlet udtryksortografi) and mirrored content orthography (Danish: spejlet indholdsortografi). Among these, mirrored expression orthography constitutes the core domain, followed by mirrored content orthography, which has been a growing domain after the 1889-directives, and autonomous content orthography, which is a potentially growing domain.