scholarly journals Translating the Gospel in Viking Age England: The Evidence from Two Old Norse Loan Translations from Old English

2019 ◽  
Vol 137 (4) ◽  
pp. 527-560
Author(s):  
Nikolas Gunn
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Contact Situation ◽  
Biblical Translation

Abstract A recent resurgence of interest in Old Norse linguistic borrowings in Old English has greatly expanded our knowledge of the contact situation between these two speech communities in the early medieval period and beyond. However, there are a significant number of words that have been considered borrowings in the “other” direction, i. e. from Old English to Old Norse, which have not attracted the same amount of attention in current scholarship. Much of this material requires reassessment and this paper provides a case study of two parallel compound formations in both languages – OE bærsynnig [mann]/ON bersynðugr [maðr] (‘one who is openly sinful; publican’), and OE healsbōc/ON hálsbók (‘phylactery, amulet’, lit. ‘neck-book’) – that have traditionally been considered loan translations from Old English to Old Norse with little evidence other than their formation from cognate elements. In the absence of clear-cut linguistic criteria for identifying loan translations between these two closely related languages, this paper draws on a range of literary evidence to argue for a strong likelihood of a relationship between the two compounds. Both words offer important evidence for biblical translation practices, and contribute to our knowledge about the Christianisation of Norse speaking peoples and Anglo-Norse language contact in Viking Age England.

Talking about MOTION in Middle English

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Huber
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The Other ◽  
Motion Verbs ◽  
Text Type ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Contact Situation ◽  
Analysis Of Motion

Chapter 6 begins with an overview of the language contact situation with (Anglo-) French and Latin, resulting in large-scale borrowing in the Middle English period. The analysis of 465 Middle English verbs used to express intransitive motion shows that there are far more French/Latin loans in the path verbs than in the other motion verbs. The range of (new) manner of motion verbs testifies to the manner salience of Middle English: caused motion verbs are also found in intransitive motion meanings, as are French loans which do not have motion uses in continental French. Their motion uses in Anglo-Norman are discussed in terms of contact influence of Middle English. The analysis of motion expression in different texts yields a picture similar to the situation in Old English, with path typically expressed in satellites, and neutral as well as manner of motion verbs being most frequent, depending on text type.

Old Norse Mythology as Sacred Narrative

2021 ◽  
pp. 65-102
Author(s):  
John Lindow
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Deep Sea ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Chronological Order ◽  
Simple Fact ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
Norse Mythology

This chapter presents a case study of one myth that we have from pictorial sources in the Viking Age, from poems almost certainly composed in the Viking Age, and from thirteenth-century sources, namely the encounter between the god Þórr (Thor) and his cosmic enemy, the World serpent, a beast that encircles the earth, in the deep sea. In this myth, Þórr fishes up the serpent, and depending on the variant, Þórr may or may not kill the serpent. I present and analyze the texts in more or less chronological order, from the older skalds through the Eddic poem Hymiskviða, through Snorri Sturluson in Edda, and compare the texts to the rock carvings that portray the myth. I argue that the issue of the death or survival of the serpent is less important than the simple fact that Þórr had the serpent on his hook.

Language Contact in Early Medieval Britain: Settlement, Interaction, and Acculturation

2020 ◽  
pp. 62-89
Author(s):  
Martin Findell ◽  
Philip A. Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Written Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
First Case ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
English Spelling

This chapter explores language contact in early medieval Britain, focusing on the methodological problems involved in studying historical language contact in situations where records of the languages involved are sparse. Two case studies then look at linguistic evidence for contact situations, one addressing the uses of the term wealh in Old English and especially in the Laws of Ine, while the other explores the influence of Latin on the development of Old English spelling. The first case study argues that the term wealh in early Old English (as in Continental Germanic) usage identified groups and individuals as Roman, as distinct from the identification with Celtic languages that developed later in the period. The second case study shows how spellings of the reflex of pre-Old English *[ɡɡj] developed through the engagement of Old English speakers with Latin, demonstrating the interactions between developments in the spoken and written language.

External motivations for Jespersen’s cycle

2020 ◽  
pp. 117-148
Author(s):  
Anne Breitbarth ◽  
Christopher Lucas ◽  
David Willis
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Stage Ii ◽  
Wide Area ◽  
Transitional Stage ◽  
Apparent Diffusion ◽  
Diffusion Pattern ◽  
Contact Situation ◽  
The Stability

This chapter turns to external motivations for Jespersen’s cycle. Given the apparent diffusion pattern of the development in northwestern Europe observed in chapter 2, the current chapter considers the question of whether Jespersen’s cycle was a single innovation that spread through language contact, or whether there were several separate instances of Jespersen’s cycle in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. The timing of the changes in the different languages are mapped to the socio-historical situations, leading to the conclusion that in northwestern Europe at least, the trigger of Jespersen’s cycle was much less frequently contact-induced than previously thought. An in-depth case study of three Afro-Asiatic languages in North Africa, however, shows that language contact can lead to the diffusion of Jespersen’s cycle across a wide area. Furthermore, the stability of the transitional stage II may be related to the type of contact situation.

scholarly journals The Finnish of Rautalampi and Värmland

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Torbjörn Söder
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Contact Situation ◽  
The 19Th Century

In this paper some of the features of the Finnish spoken in the former great-parish of Rautalampi and Värmland are discussed. These two Finnish varieties are, owing to their common historical background, closely affiliated, both being defined as Eastern Finnish Savo dialects. These varieties were isolated from each other for hundreds of years and the circumstances of the two speech communities are in many respects different. The language contact situation in Värmland involves Swedish varieties and Värmland Finnish but limited contact with other Finnish varieties. The contact situation in what once was the great-parish of Rautalampi involves mainly Finnish varieties, both dialects and Standard Finnish. Social and economic circumstances have also had an effect on the contact situations, especially since the 19th century when Finland was separated from Sweden and industrialization made its definite entrance into both areas. The differing language contact situations have in some respects yielded different results. This paper provides examples of the differences, which have occurred as an effect of the circumstances in Rautalampi and in Värmland. I provide examples from the phonological, morphological, lexical, and syntactic levels and discuss them in light of the language contact situation in these areas.

scholarly journals Old Norse and Old English Language Contact: Scandinavian Legal Terminology in Anglo-Saxon Laws

2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Viola Miglio
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
English Language ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Place Names ◽  
Anglo Saxon

The Scandinavian occupation of wide territories in the British Islands from about 900 CE onwards has left a number of vestiges both in place-names, in the pronunciation and lexicon of northern dialects, especially Scottish, as well as loanwords in standard English, some of which are remarkably common, ugly, to take and window to name but three.

Exploring discourse on globalizing English

English Today ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Onysko
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Julia Kristeva ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Semiotic System ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Linguistic Unit ◽  
Linguistic Units

ABSTRACTA case study of discourse on anglicisms in German.“By recognizing our uncanny strangeness, we shall neither suffer from it nor enjoy it from the outside. The foreigner is within me, hence we are all foreigners. If I am a foreigner, there are no foreigners.” (Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves (1991)).Is Kristeva's dissolution of the notion ‘foreign’ also applicable to language? The nature of language as a semiotic system of arbitrarily bound units of meaning and form determines the essential foreignness of signifier and signified. As such, every linguistic unit is indeed intrinsically foreign on the level of designation and, thus, there is no foreign language. On the surface of human communication, however, incomprehensibility among speakers can emerge as a criterion of foreignness. The perception of the foreign in language is particularly tied to situations of contact between different language-cultural areas. Such contact can occur internally in a multilingual speaker or can be observed externally as happening in the speech community. In both ways, crucial to language contact is a perceived intertwining of linguistic units from at least two distant, i.e. incomprehensible, codes culturally rooted in diverse speech communities.

scholarly journals “They used to follow Ø river”: The Zero Article in York English

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 279-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Rupp ◽  
Sali A. Tagliamonte
Keyword(s):  
Logistic Regression ◽  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Old English ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Middle Age ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Contemporary Development ◽  
Insight Into

Speakers of York English (UK) use a zero article with definite singular nouns (e.g., “They used to follow Ø river”), which is impossible in Standard English. We probe the possibility that this form is a remnant from Old English, when there were no articles as they are currently found in Modern English, rather than a more contemporary development. We trace the diachronic trajectory of the zero article in historical-descriptive grammars and test social and linguistic constraints on its use in York English in a logistic regression analysis. The results show that information structure is a significant predictor of the zero article across all generations of the community and that the zero article is used in the same way as it was used as far back as Old English. However, it exhibits heightened usage among the older and younger generations, exhibiting a U-shaped curve. We suggest that this pattern demonstrates longitudinal maintenance of a conservative feature, which is suppressed in middle-age as the result of social pressures. In this way, this case study adds insight into the fate of dialect features in contemporary speech communities. It also highlights the importance of combining insights from different strands in linguistics for understanding the evolution of syntactic variants like the zero article.

Old Norse Influence on the Language of Beowulf: A Reassessment

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard Neidorf ◽  
Rafael J. Pascual
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Systematic Examination ◽  
Scandinavian Language ◽  
Theoretical Considerations

This article undertakes the first systematic examination of Frank’s (1979, 1981, 1987, 1990, 2007b, 2008) claim that Old Norse influence is discernible in the language of Beowulf. It tests this hypothesis first by scrutinizing each of the alleged Nordicisms in Beowulf, then by discussing various theoretical considerations bearing on its plausibility. We demonstrate that the syntactic, morphological, lexical, and semantic peculiarities that Frank would explain as manifestations of Old Norse influence are more economically and holistically explained as consequences of archaic composition. We then demonstrate that advances in the study of Anglo-Scandinavian language contact provide strong reasons to doubt that Old Norse could have influenced Beowulf in the manner that Frank has proposed. We conclude that Beowulf is entirely devoid of Old Norse influence and that it was probably composed ca. 700, long before the onset of the Viking Age.

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