Search

This chapter develops an analysis of the alternation between verb-third (V3) and verb-second (V2) in the older West Germanic languages in terms of information-structural considerations. It presents the situation in Old English and Old High German as well as new data from Old Saxon, proposing on the basis of this data that there were (at least) two possible left-peripheral targets for verb-movement in Proto-West Germanic, Force0 and Fin0, with information-structural considerations determining the surface constituent order of neutral declarative clauses. Strict V2, under this account, is a more recent development in Old Saxon and later Old High German. published

Övdalian is spoken in central Sweden by about 2000 speakers. Traditionally categorized as a dialect of Swedish, it has not received much international attention. However, Övdalian is typologically closer to Faroese or Icelandic than it is to Swedish, and since it has been spoken in relative isolation for about 1000 years, a number of interesting linguistic archaisms have been preserved and innovations have developed. This volume provides seven papers about Övdalian morphology and syntax. The papers, all based on extensive fieldwork, cover topics such as verb movement, subject doubling, wh-words and case in Övdalian. Constituting the first comprehensive linguistic description of Övdalian in English, this volume is of interest for linguists in the fields of Scandinavian and Germanic linguistics, and also historical linguists will be thrilled by some of the presented data. The data and the analyses presented here furthermore challenge our view of the morphosyntax of the Scandinavian languages in some cases – as could be expected when a new language enters the linguistic arena.

In this paper, we show how the Contrastivist Hypothesis (Hall 2007, Dresher 2008) can be amended using Element Theory (KLV 1988; Angoujard 1997; Scheer 1999; Backley 2011) and Government Phonology (KLV 1990; Lowenstamm 1996; Scheer 2004). Given the richness of the phenomenology of Nordic languages, this family constitutes our testing ground. While one might expect five different hierarchies, given that Scandinavian languages are distinct languages, what we actually find is one unique hierarchy where the same features are used in the same order. However, if we want a full understanding of the Nordic phenomenology and if we maintain the hierarchy exactly as it is, two difficulties appear: the first one involves motivation, the second one naturalness. In order to overcome the two kinds of difficulties mentioned above, we aim to develop a representation of the obstruent inventory based on unary primes using Element Theory and Government Phonology. The results we get from this hierarchy cannot be considered independently from the syllabic structure. Therefore, we propose a rereading of the phenomenology of Nordic that connects the new elementary representations that we posit to the syllabic constraints. As a consequence, we explore new hypotheses concerning the phonological activity in Scandinavian languages.

The authors examine how learning objectives were implemented in a study program named “Bachelor of Scandinavian language and literature” at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). One of the authors played a crucial role in this process, thereby obtaining insights into attitudes and practices of the faculty involved. The focus of the article is on established writing and oral presentation skill requirements in the study program. We examine the extent to which these requirements were communicated to the students, and how learning objectives were transformed into teaching and learning structures, in assignments and exams. This study confirms the lack of a solid shared practice for implementing and utilizing learning objectives. Moreover, there is clearly a need for guiding principles displaying how learning objectives may be used at course level. Much work still remains before the aforementioned established language and presentation skills are effectively implemented into the study program, including greater relative emphasis in exams and as guidelines for grading. © 2015 Vidar Gynnild og Kristin Melum Eide. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.

In ‘one-to-one’ computing, schools provide learners with individual laptops. This chapter presents an analysis of how such laptops are used for writing and text creation by students in two secondar ...

Part of the book "Studies in Övdalian Morphology and Syntax: New Research on a Lesser-Known Scandinavian Language" edited by Kristine Bentzen, Henrik Rosenkvist and Janne Bondi Johannessen. The Övdalian wh-word ukin has a variety of syntactic uses, spanning from the canonical use as personal pronoun (‘who’) to predicative property querying item (‘what ... like’) and polarity item introducing both main and embedded clauses. In this paper the various uses will be described and discussed, and it will be argued that the polyfunctionality of ukin can be well understood on the background of wh-syncretisms in other North Germanic varieties which all point in the direction of principled grammaticalization patterns in this domain. The pattern found will be accounted for by a nanosyntactic approach to lexicalization ranges.

Where Discourse Structure and a Heritage Language Meet : Oral History Interviews of Swedish Americans

In Old West Norse there is mention of an Arctic skin and osier boat, which was paddled with Old West Norse (húð)keipr, diminutive keipull, formed on Germanic *kaip- ’bend, unfold’ according to the construction method. In East Norse there was a corresponding wooden boat, e.g. Swedish själ-myndrick, formed on mynda verb ‘paddle’ (< Primitive Norse *mundian ‘aim at a certain goal, take aim’). In the provinces south of this verb’s area of distribution there occurs instead svepa verb ’paddle’ (< Primitive Germanic *swaipōn ‘swing’). The earliest instances of Nordic rowing navigation are found in Norway and Denmark. Instances of rowing in the Baltic area are found on some picture stones from about the 6th century. But oarlocks with a grommet were probably used already for the steering oar in the paddled boats of the Bronze Age. An early oarlock (with a grommet) is that made of a goose-necked piece of wood, Old Swedish hār, Old West Norse hár (< *hanhu-, *hanha- ‘branching, fork of a branch’) and Old West Norse keipr (< *kaip- ‘something with a crooked or bent (-back) shape’. The word hár exists as a first element in Old Swedish hā-band ‘oar-loop’, Old West Norse há-bora ‘oar-port’ etc. Old West Norse keipr ‘oarlock’ has no ancient compounds. East Nordic hamna (> Finnish hamina), Old Danish hafnæ (Old Frisian hevene) and West Nordic hamla (Faroese homla, Old English hamele, hamule) ‘oar-loop’ occurred early on the oarlock with a grommet; hamna may be a derivation of the stem in Primitive Norse *haƀan verb ‘hold (fast)’, alternatively *hafna- ‘clasp something’; hamla derives from a Germanic *hamilōn with the meaning ‘bridling band’. Centrally in the Nordic area hamna (Danish havne) and hamla ‘oar-loop’ were also used denominatively with the meaning ‘row pushing in a hamna/hamla (oar-loop)’. In addition there is the Swedish dialectal sväva (~ sveva, svävja) ‘row (back, break etc.) with pushing rowing’ and in the group of older verbs for rowing there is East Swedish hopa < Primitive Norse *hōƀian ‘fix one’s eyes upon a certain goal (in the distance)’. With word formations on Germanic *þulna- ‘wooden plug’ there arose from the Middle Ages and in the North Sea countries a new terminology for the oarlock: Norse tull, toll ‘oarlock with a thole pin’. Even younger concepts are tullgång ‘oarlock with two thole pins’, årklyka, årgaffel ‘oar crutch’. A distinctive trait of Old Swedish hār and hamna, Old West Norse hár and hamla and keipr and other common words for the oarlock is in these words the shift of meaning ‘oarlock of a specific kind’ > ‘almost any kind of oarlock’. Finally, the question arises whether or not the word svear of a tribe by Lake Mälaren could be tied to the paddling through a connection to the stem of the verbs svepa and sväva. Ingår även i serie: Studier till en svensk dialektgeografisk atlas, 8

There is well known variation in the Scandinavian languages with respect to verb placement in embedded clauses (see e.g. Holmberg & Platzack 1995, Bobaljik 2002, Thrainsson 2010, Heycock et al. 2012 inter alia). In the modern Mainland Scandinavian languages, the finite verb follows negation in relative clauses and embedded questions (henceforth V-in-situ ). In Icelandic, on the other hand, the verb moves across negation to a position in the T-domain (henceforth V-to-T movement); see the simplified structure in (1). Older stages of Mainland Scandinavian pattern with Icelandic.

This paper reports on an investigation of the mutual intelligibility of the three mainland Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian). These languages are so closely related that the speakers mostly use their own languages to communicate with each other. However, this kind of communication sometimes requires a great effort by the speakers (e.g. Maurud 1976, Bo 1978, Borestam 1987). Recently it has been investigated how well people understand each other in the Nordic countries (Delsing & Lundin Akesson 2005, henceforth referred to as the INS-investigation).1 In this investigation intelligibility was assessed as well as contact and attitude, but like in all previous investigations little attention was paid to linguistic distances between the languages when explaining the results. In the present investigation, a limited set of the INS-results was analyzed and extra material was added with the aim of gaining insight into the role of linguistic and extra-linguistic variables for the mutual intelligibility between speakers of the three Scandinavian languages.

The Scandinavian languages are so alike that their speakers often communicate, each using their own language, which Haugen (1966) dubbed 'semicommunication'. This kind of communication is, however, sometimes problematic, especially when it involves Danish. For this reason some Scandinavians prefer to communicate in English. This tendency has been claimed to have become stronger during the last decades and some people see this as a threat to the use of the Scandinavian languages in a Scandinavian context. It is, however, unknown how well Scandinavians understand English in comparison to the neighboring languages. In the present investigation it was investigated how well young Swedes and Norwegians understand English in comparison to Danish by means of written and spoken language tests. The results are explained by means of linguistic and extralinguistic factors.

Recent research on linguistic typology has revealed fundamental differences between so-called endocentric and exocentric languages. The former are characterised by having a relatively high lexical and informational weight in the verbs, that is in the centre of the proposition (hence the term “endocentric”), whereas the latter have a higher lexical and informational weight in the nominal arguments, that is outside the centre of the proposition (hence the term “exocentric”). Furthermore, exocentric verbs are characterised by a rich inflectional system that enables them to express text-pragmatic and rhetorical distinctions that generally are not rendered explicit in endocentric languages. The Scandinavian languages, among which Danish, are endocentric, whereas the Romance languages, among which Italian, are exocentric. This article deals with a series of differences between Danish and Italian in terms of their pertinence for translation and translation strategies. On the basis of cognitive, anthropological a...

The aim of much linguistic research is to determine the grammar and the lexicon of a certain language L. The spoken variant of L – in so far as it is considered at all – is generally taken to be just another projection of the same grammar and lexicon. We suspect that this assumption may be wrong. Our suspicion derives from our contrastive analyses of four corpora, two Swedish and two Danish (covering spoken as well as written language), suggesting that – in the dimensions of frequency distribution, word type selection, and distribution over parts of speech – the mode of communication (spoken versus written) is much more significant as a determining factor than even the choice of language (Swedish versus Danish).

Denmark, Norway and Sweden form the region of Scandinavia, but they are also a part of the Nordic region, ‘Norden’, which consists of five countries and three autonomous areas. The Nordic countries established the Nordic Council, an organized cooperation on the parliamentary level, in 1952. Under the umbrella of ‘Norden’ there are a great number of institutions, committees and institutional bodies, many of them in the cultural field. The Nordic Literature and Library Committee (NORDBOK) supports various projects and initiatives aimed at promoting Nordic literature and gives translation grants for a considerable number of books each year. The library aspect of the committee’s work is directed towards the public library sector. At the top of the Nordic agenda in 2005 is the question of language. Eight languages are spoken in the region, but there is a Nordic linguistic community based on the three Scandinavian languages. The Nordic linguistic community provides a foundation for cultural cooperation and a necessary platform for collaboration in many other fields.

The paper compares two lexical items, Icelandic ma@?ur and Swedish man, for the construction of a detached, general discourse stance (Berman, Ragnarsdottir and Stromqvist, 2002). Both forms mean 'man', but they can also be used in a generic sense. In that usage, Icelandic ma@?ur is associated with several semantic, pragmatic, and stylistic constraints, whereas Swedish man is more freely applicable across contexts and genres. Data derived from 632 discourse tokens produced by 158 subjects were analyzed, focusing on frequency distributions of generic usages of ma@?ur/man with respect to age (10-11, 13-14, 16-17 years, adults), genre (narrative, expository), modality (speaking, writing), and language (Icelandic, Swedish). Both Icelandic and Swedish revealed a clear preference for using maDur/man in expository discourse, a finding which validates the assumption that these terms play a role in the construction of a depersonalized, general discourse stance. Further, Swedish man was used considerably more frequently than Icelandic ma@?ur, a finding which is explained as due to the difference in the constraints restricting the domain of use of the apparently equivalent term in the two languages. By and large, two main factors were found to underlie the distributions of maDur/man: general socio-cognitive development and culturally specific stylistic constraints.

The concept of complete equivalence is highly questionable, yet it is still relied on, for all practical purposes, in connection with the translation of Latin-based medical terms. This practice is potentially harmful, a case in point being the translation of medical texts for laymen from English into Danish. Contrary to Danish (and German and other Scandinavian languages), everyday English (and French) avails itself of numerous Latin-based medical terms, as no non-specialized alternative exists. When these terms are directly transferred under the assumption of complete equivalence, the level of formality is drastically raised. Increased awareness of the potential danger to communication posed by Latin-based terms in texts meant for lay audiences in Scandinavia and Germany is therefore desirable.

This article attempts to shed light on the issue of a possible link between the loss of ‘rich’ subject-verb agreement and the loss of verb raising in embedded clauses in earlier stages of the Mainland Scandinavian languages. Different versions of this so-called ‘Rich Agreement Hypothesis’ are compared in light of new diachronic data from the history of Danish. Examples of word order variation with and without verb raising over sentential adverbials were collected from a corpus of twelve sets of texts written in the Early Modern Danish period (ca. 1500–1700). Empirical results indicate that distinctions in person agreement in the verbal inflectional paradigm disappeared nearly 250 years before a significant decline in the frequency of verb raising. In order to explain a possible trigger for this change, the article closely examines the impact of structurally ambiguous word order and syntactic – not morphological – clues during acquisition.

The typological and lexical similarities between the major Scandinavian languages Danish, Norwegian and Swedish as well as a feeling of economic, political and cultural togetherness, facilitate direct interscandinavian communication. Communication participants use their own languages, both in speaking or writing and in decoding what is said or written. This specific situation is called semicommunication. There are, however, problems in semicommunication, too. The pronunciation of Danish has changed strongly over time, and English has strengthened its position as a global lingua franca. The question of how well Scandinavians really understand one another is, therefore, an interesting one. Research has shown that Norwegians have a better understanding than other Scandinavians. This can be accounted for by their language's intermediate position. Another explanation is the linguistic variation in Norway, making Norwegians more experienced in interpreting small differences between language variants. In my MA-thesis, I have focussed on the differences as regards Norwegian language variation experience between the smaller and more experienced Nynorsk group and the bigger and less experienced Bokmål group. Both groups' understanding of written Swedish was tested. A Danish control group took the same test. Results show that the Norwegian group in general had few problems understanding written Swedish. A difference between the Nynorsk group and the Bokmål group, however, could not be found.

This paper discusses a number of contact languages that have been used in Scandinavian contexts. In their forts and colonies in North America, Greenland, West Africa, India and the Caribbean, Swedes and Danes used pidginized and creolized varieties of an Amerindian language, Greenlandic, Portuguese and Dutch respectively. The paper also compares the three known pidgins based on Scandinavian languages, and discusses possible historical connections between these three and possibly other northern pidgins. Some social and typological differences are brought forward to explain the different results.

Norfoods was established in 1982 and now includes agencies and institutions responsible for food composition work in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and lately Greenland. Recent activities include publications of national food composition tables, a glossary on food terms used in the Nordic languages and specific projects, e.g. on publication of food composition data on the Internet, folate in foods and dietary calculation procedures.

The present paper draws the reader's attention to the lexical influence of Scandinavian languages on the languages of the Eastern Slavic bloc as well as to the „reverse side of the coin” i.e. the Eastern Slavic lexical influence on the Scandinavian languages. The following points are discussed in the study:1)Russian words of Scandinavian origin.-As it is widely known, in the case of Russian, the influence of the Scandinavian languages began with the emergence of the Rurikovich-dynasty. The changes resulting from it have had their linguistic consequences in Russian, among others, in the form of some loanwords of Scandinavian origin. (About the historical background see Font 1995: 6-42, Patrovics 1997: 109-116, and ?????????? 1978. Be reminded furthermore that in the case of Polish, the Scandinavian lexical influence can be minimized to inter-state relations to a much lesser degree than in the case of Russian. About the Scandinavian-Polish lexical contacts see Jurkowski 1993: 18-25, Patrovics 2000: 221-226)...

In the Middle Ages, the world scalp, schelpe, scallop, and so forth had a different meaning in some European languages (English, German, Scandinavian languages): a cup (including a skull or the shell of a shellfish). It also meant the sheath of a sword.1 Today scalping means the removal of skin with the hair from the head of a dead or living person. The term became widely used in 1657, after the colonization of the North American continent (Dieck 1969, p. 360). Missionaries and settlers wrote about Indians' extreme bloodthirstiness without knowing that the past of some European and Asiatic peoples hides equally sinister mysteries.

The connection between mad cow disease (BSE) and humans, and the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in Great Britain in February 2001, have shaken the principles of the commercial farming business. The great leap from mixed organic farming to commercial farming took place in the industrialised countries soon after the Second World War. Important preconditions for commercial farming were the new innovations made in the agricultural chemistry. The principles of commercial farming were for the first time called into question at the beginning of the 1960s by the late American biologist, Rachel Carson, in her book, Silent Spring (1962). The book was a ‘declaration of war’ on the chemical companies and researchers working with chemical crop-protection all over the world. Silent Spring was soon translated into the Nordic languages. This article focuses on the reactions of the leading Finnish and Swedish agricultural magazines to Carson's provocative claims. Among Swedish agricultural experts, Cars...

This paper discusses criteria for distinguishing attributive (also known as adjectival) clauses and relative clauses, and argues that traditional approaches to these subclause categories and their interrelation lack consistency as well as empirical justification, from a modern Scandinavian perspective. Relative clauses are traditionally and in current Scandinavian reference grammars treated as a formally defined clause type with the attributive function as their prototypical, but not their only, constituent function. In this paper it is argued that the traditional criteria for identifying relative clauses, especially in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, are essentially not formal but functional criteria, more or less identical to those applied to identify attributive clauses. Indeed, the modern Scandinavian languages, it is argued, hardly offer the empirical basis for a coherent category of relative clauses to be consistently distinguished on formal criteria. Rather, to account for the heterogeneous inventory of subclauses traditionally associated with relative clauses, a general outline of the functional category of attributive clauses in Danish is proposed, based on authentic spoken and written Danish discourse. Traditional definitions of attributive clauses are discussed and refined, and are shown to apply to a different and wider range of Danish subclause forms than has traditionally been recognised.

Stress-sensitive quantity alternation is commonplace in Scandinavian languages (Elert 1964; Eliasson 1985; Kiparsky To appear; Leyden 2002), but few reports have detailed similar types of alternation in Native American languages. This paper will offer both phonetic and phonological evidence for a case of segmental quantity alternation in Washo. It is argued that the segmental alternations observed are motivated by a previously unnoticed requirement in the language to keep the stressed syllable heavy. The paper begins with a brief overview of the phonological system of Washo (Section 1), and phonetic and phonological evidence will be presented demonstrating the existence of stress-sensitive segmental length and fission alternations (Section 2). Finally, a formal analysis couched within Optimality Theory is given in Section 3.

Left dislocation is a common feature in the Nordic languages. In main clauses, a lexical noun phrase is positioned in a dislocated position in the left periphery, while a pronoun occurs in the clause-internal, prefield position, i.e., in the position preceding the finite verb. This is described by Faarlund et al (1997:904-5) for Norwegian, Teleman et al (1999 4:440–447) for Swedish and Hansen and Heltoft (2011:1828) for Danish.

What tends to be regarded as the prototypical language of digital texts is often associated with a certain linguistic style, for example strong expressions of emotion, an absence of references, use of emoticons and unconventional abbreviations (Hård af Segerstad 2002). This article broadens the image of digital texts by studying blogging as participation in communicative activities (Levinson 1979, Lave & Wenger 1998, Sarangi 2000, Linell 2011). The study explores how language use is shaped by the social contexts it forms part of. Individuals are seen as bearers of linguistic repertoires, from which they can draw and use different resources in different contexts in order to create meaning. The study draws attention to social and contextual factors as significant for how two bloggers, Dan 16 and Erik 85 years old, choose linguistic resources when they produce blog posts about participating in an excursion with friends. It provides a greater understanding of young people’s and senior citizens’ everyday writing and shows how individuals’ digital texts are the result of of a complex interplay between contextual, technical and personal factors.

Among the present-day Scandinavian languages, only Danish and possibly Faroese have a split auxiliary system where unaccusative verbs form perfects with BE, while transitive and unergative verbs form perfects with HAVE (see e.g. Vikner & Sprouse 1988, Platzack 1988, Larsson 2009, 2013); see the Danish examples in (1).[1] Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish have the auxiliary HAVE in both contexts, just like English. [...]

This article offers an overview of comparative syntactic research covering the Scandinavian languages in the last couple of decades. Most of this research has been conducted within Principles-and-Parameters theory, mostly its Government-Binding phase, and a brief outline of theoretical developments in the 70’s leading up GB theory is included. Comparative Scandinavian syntax research is exemplified both by studies contrasting Scandinavian languages as a whole with English, by studies examining contrasts between Insular and Mainland Scandinavian, and finally with regard to some internal Mainland Scandinavian differences.

According to Hesselman's Law, lengthenings in closed syllables (CSL) precede lengthenings in open syllables (OSL). This paper surveys dialectal and philological evidence from North Germanic and Upper German in support of Hesselman's Law. The paper argues that CSL serves as a catalyst for OSL. After CSL, short vowels are always followed by long consonants and short consonants are always preceded by long vowels in stressed heavy syllables, a pattern consistent with crosslinguistic tendencies for V/C duration ratios. OSL occurs when language learners extend the pattern by lengthening short vowels followed by heterosyllabic short consonants. The Moraic Preservation Principle (MPP) accounts for the precedence of CSL over OSL despite the preference for bimoraic stressed syllables in Germanic known as Prokosch's Law. A generalization of the Moraic Conservation Principle proposed by Hayes (1989), the MPP states that lengthening processes preserve mora count. CSL does not violate MPP since it results in a bimoraic syllable remaining bimoraic. However, OSL constitutes a violation of MPP by adding to the mora count of the word. I would like to thank two anonymous JGL reviewers and Mark Louden for helpful comments and suggestions.

SUMMARY This investigation of Germanic Verscharfung distinguishes between two types of phonological change. Sound change affects only the phonetic features of a segment whereas prosodic change consists of a change in the rhythmic structure of a language. The fixing of initial stress in Germanic is a prosodic change which conditions the gemination of intervocalic glides following short, previously unstressed vowels. However, the gemination of glides is irregular since prosodic change is phonetically abrupt but lexically gradual and may therefore lead to irregular changes on the segmental level. In contrast, the second stage of Germanic Verschärfung, the fortition of geminate glides to geminate obstruents in East and North Germanic, is an exceptionless sound change in which [-consonantal] becomes [+consonantal]. RÉSUMÉ Cette enquête de la Verschärfung germanique distingue entre deux types de changement phonologique. Tandis que le changement phonétique n'affecte que les caractéristiques phonétiques d'un segment, le changement prosodique transforme la structure rythmique d'une langue. L'introduction de l'accent initial dans la langue germanique est un changement prosodique qui entraîne la gémination des sons transitoires intervocaliques après une voyelle courte préalablement non-accentuée. Cependant, la gémination des sons transitoires est irrégulière, étant donné que le changement prosodique est phonétiquement abrupte, mais lexicalement graduel. Pour cette raison, le changement prosodique peut entraîner un changement irrégulier au niveau du segment. Par contre, la deuxième phase de la Verschärfung germanique, la transformation des sons transitoires géminés en occlusives géminées dans la langue germanique orientale et septentrionale, constitue un changement phonétique sans exception dans lequel [-consonne] devient [+consonne]. ZUSAMMENFASSUNG In dieser Untersuchung der germanischen Verschärfung werden zwei Arten von phonologischem Wandel unterschieden. Lautwandel betrifft nur die phonetischen Merkmale eines Segments, wahrend prosodischer Wandel die rhythmische Struktur einer Sprache verandert. Die Einführung des Initialakzents im Germanischen ist ein prosodischer Wandel, der die Verdop-pelung zwischenvokalischer Gleitlaute herbeiführt, wenn der vorangehende Vokal kurz und vorher unbetont war. Die Verdoppelung von Gleitlauten ist jedoch unregelmäßig, denn prosodischer Wandel ist phonetisch abrupt aber lexikalisch graduell. Deswegen kann prosodischer Wandel zu unregel-mäBigem Wandel auf der segmentalen Ebene führen. Andererseits ist die zweite Phase der Verschärfung, die Verstärkung von verdoppelten Gleitlauten zu verdoppelten Obstruenten im Ost- und Nordgermanischen, ein ausnahms-loser Lautwandel, in dem [-konsonantisch] zu [+konsonantisch] wird.

Complex NP constructions involving nominalisations and preposed or postposed attributive modifiers of various kinds abound in German informational and academic prose. Similar constructions are fairly rare, and their possibilities of formation restricted, in Scandinavian languages as, for instance, Norwegian. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate and discuss some of the interlingual differences in question in a way which may hopefully prove conducive to an understanding of their systematic typological motivation.

The peripheral location of Scandinavian dialects with preaspiration supports the view that preaspiration was present in Common Scandinavian. Sound changes in Common Scandinavian and resulting morphophonemic alternations in the older Scandinavian languages exhibit the articulatory timing characteristic of preaspiration and sonorant devoicing and further bolster the argument that Common Scandinavian is theterminus ad quemfor the origin of preaspiration. Dialectal and historical data also indicate that preaspiration is primarily, but not exclusively, a West Scandinavian phenomenon. Finally, it is argued that the reconstruction of preaspiration and sonorant devoicing for Common Scandinavian motivates the development of West Jutlandic stød and the distribution of Common Danish stød in West Jutlandic.

Evidence suggests that Germanic languages resisted the spread of historical umlaut processes. We propose that examples of such superficially varied umlautless residues all yield to a single coherent phonological account. Specifically, these vocalic assimilations show strong preferences for reducing more extreme differences in place of articulation between trigger and target while failing to assimilate articulatorily closer vowels, so that triggering /i, j/ first and most consistently mutated /a/ and last and least consistently mutated /u(:)/. This vocalic cline interacts with the consonantal material intervening between trigger and target, so that obstruent clusters (especially velar or labial) are prone to inhibit umlaut. In both cases, the smaller the phonetic difference between target and trigger, the less likely umlaut is to occur. While umlaut failure has long been consigned to the margins of theories of umlaut, we argue that it is crucial, providing a snapshot of how umlaut unfolded across western and north Germanic.

The impact of Low German on the continental Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian) in the days of the Hanseatic League has been a decisive chapter in Scandinavian language history. Not only were a substantial amount of words transferred from Middle Low German into Middle Scandinavian, it has also been argued that Middle Low German influence played an important part in the loss of inflectional morphology (deflexion 1 ) in most varieties of the continental Scandinavian languages, although this aspect remains somewhat underexposed in the extensive literature on language contact between Middle Low German and Middle Scandinavian . The strongest argument in favour of this claim is that the decline of the old native inflectional systems reached its most advanced stage in precisely those areas where Middle Low German impact was at its strongest, whereas more peripheral languages and dialects, such as Icelandic or certain Swedish rural dialects are more conservative. However, it still remains unclear in what way contact with Middle Low German affected Scandinavian morphology. In the present study I will examine some of the hypotheses that have been put forward with regard to the relationship between language contact and morphological simplification. 2 I will approach this problem from two, rather different, angles. First, I will discuss the hypothesis that long term contact between closely related languages (such as Middle Low German and Middle Scandinavian or Old English and Old Norse), which to a degree are mutually intelligible, leads to a rapid neutralisation of inflectional differences. The second viewpoint I will consider concerns the relation between the vast amount of loan-words and morphological simplification (cf. Norde 1994). I will take the Middle Low German influence on Middle Swedish as an example.

One of the most conspicuous features of the Scandinavian languages is that definiteness with bare nouns is expressed by means of a suffix, e.g., hus-et 'house DEF, the house'. Since the Danish dialects of South and West Jutland, like the other Germanic languages, use a prepositive article, it has often been suggested that this article, viz. œ, e.g., œ hus 'the house', is a borrowing from neighbouring Low German. This suggestion has to be rejected on the following two grounds: 1. Like the Scandinavian languages, but unlike the other Germanic languages, the Jutlandic dialects make a distinction between definiteness with bare nouns and definiteness in other cases. The systems of definiteness in these dialects and in Standard Danish are in fact almost identical, the only difference being that the dialects have a prefix where the standard language has a suffix. 2. Definiteness became part of the grammar of the Scandinavian languages several centuries before the Low Germans started to play a significant role in Scandinavia. The reason, then, why the Jutlandic dialects developed a prefix instead of a suffix of definiteness is probably that a major change in word order had taken place before marking of definiteness became obligatory: attributes were placed before, instead of after, the noun they qualified. In the other Scandinavian dialects the order of events was the other way round.