122. Phonological developments from Old Nordic to Early Modern Nordic I: West Scandinavian

Schulte, Michael; Bandle, Oskar; Braunmüller, Kurt; Jahr, Ernst Håkon; Karker, Allan; Naumann, Hans-Peter; Teleman, Ulf; Elmevik, Lennart; Widmark, Gun

doi:10.1515/9783110197068-004

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…in the way of synchronic lengthenings or shortenings). Second, as illustrated in (11) subsequent vowel mergers over the course of the 12th–14th centuries across West Norse varieties do not align with the presentation in (10) (Schulte ).…”

Section: Theoretical Assumptionsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Transparency and blocking in Old Norwegian height harmony

Sandstedt

2017

Trans of the Philol Soc

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This paper provides a new phonological and philological analysis of previously unexplained disharmonic patterns in Old Norwegian height harmony. Old Norwegian displays cross‐linguistically rare forms of blocking and transparency, which under traditional assumptions of Old Norwegian vowels and vowel harmony are both phonologically and orthographically irregular. I show that these patterns make perfect phonological sense if we reinterpret the Old Norwegian neutral vowels æ–ǫ as [−low, −ATR] /ɛ, ɔ/ and assume that Old Norwegian height harmony was relativized to [high] contrastive visibility and bounded by high‐sonority elements, resulting in the transparency of [high] non‐contrastive items and blocking by high‐sonority [+low] vowels. This featural interpretation fits with the later diachronic development of Old Norwegian vowels and additionally helps explain patterned spelling variation found in both roman and runic writing.

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Section: Theoretical Assumptionsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Transparency and blocking in Old Norwegian height harmony

Sandstedt

2017

Trans of the Philol Soc

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“…Old Norse adjectives with stem-final -ð, where this pattern originated, were not restricted in this way. In a sample of 34 such adjectives in Old Norse, 24 23 The chronology in Table 10 is rather tentative, but according to Schulte (2005Schulte ( : 1082, the loss of r is "traceable from the 13 th century onward", while lengthening of originally short syllables is dated to the 13 th and 14 th century. 24 Figures in this section are based on a sample of 34 Old Norse adjectives with stem-final -Vð, taken from the wordlist of the University of Copenhagen's Old Norse prose corpus (http://onpweb.nfi.sc.ku.dk).…”

Section: Syncretism and Defectivenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

The loss of inflection as grammar complication

Sims‐Williams

Enger

2020

DIA

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The loss of inflectional categories is often thought of as a type of simplification. In this paper we present a survey of phenomena involving the reduction of adjective agreement in Scandinavian, using examples from Norwegian, and discuss their diachronic origins, including a new account of the development of indeclinability in adjectives such as kry ‘proud’. These examples each involve lexically restricted non-canonical inflection – syncretism, defectiveness, overdifferentiation and periphrasis – in particular paradigm cells or syntactic environments. They show that the loss of inflection does not necessarily simplify grammar, and in some cases, can increase grammatical complexity by adding lexical exceptions to general rules. This excludes simplification as the motivation, even if it is the eventual result. We argue from these historical developments that speakers are liable to analyse idiosyncratic patterns of inflection as lexically specified, even where more general (but perhaps more abstract) alternatives are possible. Thus speakers do not always operate with a maximally elegant, reductionist approach to inflection classes.

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“…It is debatable, however, to what extent the monophthongisation of /ei/ > /e/ (cf. runic OEN faeigr, gaeiRR with post-runic OEN fēgher, gēr), which started in Old East Norse in the mid-10th century in Denmark (Schulte 2005(Schulte : 1082, would have been a feature of the Anglo-Scandinavian speech of the Danish settlers in England. OE probably came into contact with Old East Norse and Old West Norse rather than Old Danish and Old Norwegian proper.…”

Section: A Variationist Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

A native origin for Present-Day Englishthey, their, them

Cole

2018

DIA

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It is commonly held that Present-Day English they, their, them are not descended from Old English but derive from the Old Norse third-person plural pronouns þeir, þeira, þeim. This paper argues that the early northern English orthographic and distributional textual evidence agrees with an internal trajectory for the ‘þ-’ type personal pronouns in the North and indicates an origin in the Old English demonstratives þā, þāra, þām. The Northern Middle English third-person plural pronominal system was the result of the reanalysis from demonstrative to personal pronoun that is common cross-linguistically in Germanic and non-Germanic languages alike.

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122. Phonological developments from Old Nordic to Early Modern Nordic I: West Scandinavian

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Transparency and blocking in Old Norwegian height harmony

Transparency and blocking in Old Norwegian height harmony

The loss of inflection as grammar complication

A native origin for Present-Day Englishthey, their, them

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