Pluricentricity and minority languages: the difficult case of North Frisian

Common definitions of pluricentricity rely on the notions of centre, nation, and norm, frequently without, however, offering sufficient detail on what precisely these mean. These terms are often applied to classify languages as pluricentric or not, without adequately recognising intra-linguistic variation and dynamics of power within a speaker community (language ownership). Using the example of a national minority language from North-West Germany, North Frisian, this article discusses how a narrow reading of the definition of pluricentricity would deny such a status to this language, when in fact the sociolinguistic situation of North Frisian matches that of many acknowledged pluricentric languages. Instead, the article suggests that the term nation should no longer be equated with state, that the term centre be further specified to determine what institution or which individuals have authority over language, and that the term norm be more clearly articulated to account for the variability in “correct” language use.

Lenition in North Sea Germanic

Lenition, or postvocalic weakening of obstruents, occurred in several languages in North Sea Germanic. Although the main centers of Germanic lenition lie outside this region, in High German and Danish, systemic lenition took place in Low German, North Frisian, and Dutch. Lenition in northern Low German is completely independent of lenition in High German, but the area does, however, border on Danish, which has the most far reaching of the Germanic lenitions. Lenition in mainland North Frisian is also in an area adjacent to Danish, but it displays a modified and rather unique form. In Dutch, there are only two small isolated areas with systemic lenition, one in Groningish and one in East Flemish. In general, lenition is attributed to the establishment of complementary length and the correlation of syllable cut in accented syllables. There are several convincing arguments to support this claim. Lenition is considered a Germanic trend, which is present only in its nascent form in other areas of West Germanic.

On the fringe between West and North Germanic

In this paper I investigate the early language contact between North Frisian and Danish. Since we have no direct evidence for this language contact apart from the layer of medieval Danish interferences in Modern North Frisian, the question arises, whether it is possible to say anything about the specific type of language contact that has taken place in the Middle Ages on the basis of the modern language data and with the help of language contact theory. Taking the lead of van Coetsem’s language contact theory, I discuss two phenomena in the (morpho)syntax of Modern North Frisian, the placement of directional particles and the inventory of verbal particles, and argue that they point to a language contact situation in which a considerable number of Danish-speakers shifted to North Frisian.

Case Syncretism, Animacy, and Word Order in Continental West Germanic: Neurolinguistic Evidence from a Comparative Study on Standard German, Zurich German, and Fering (North Frisian)

To understand a sentence, it is crucial to understand who is doing what. The interplay of morphological case marking, argument serialization, and animacy provides linguistic cues for the processing system to rapidly identify the thematic roles of the arguments. The present event-related brain potential (ERP) study investigates on-line brain responses during argument identification in Zurich German, a High Alemannic dialect, and in Fering, a North Frisian variety, which both exhibit reduced case systems as compared to Standard German. Like Standard German, Zurich German and Fering are Continental West Germanic varieties, and indeed argument processing in sentences with an object-before-subject order engenders a qualitatively similar ERP pattern of a scrambling negativity followed by a P600 in all tested varieties. However, the P600 component—a late positive ERP response, which has been linked to the categorization of task-relevant stimuli—is selectively affected by the most prominent cue for argument identification in each variety, which is case marking in Standard German, but animacy in Zurich German and Fering. Thus, even closely related varieties may employ different processing strategies based on the language-specific availability of syntactic and semantic cues for argument identification.*

Gibt es im Nordfriesischen ein aus dem Dänischen entlehntes k-Suffix zur Bildung von Adjektivabstrakta?

In this paper I challenge the claim by Hofmann (1956) that the k-suffix in North Frisian abstract deadjectival nouns like f.-a. waremk ‘warmth’ is adopted from Danish. Danish loanwords like f.-a. eemk ‘grief’ are rather derived from deadjectival verbs containing a k-suffix than from adjectives originally. In other examples – waremk being a case in point – the k-suffix has developed from the suffix -d(e)/-t(e) that entered North Frisian from Low German. On the basis of such forms a semi-productive k-suffix, possibly a suffix variant of -d(e)/-t(e), arose in North Frisian, particularly in combi­nation with adjectival base words ending in -r.

North Frisian dialects: A quantitative investigation using a parallel corpus of translations

North Frisian is well-known for its small-scale variation and the traditional classification found in Århammar (1968) assumes as many as ten dialect groups within a small area. Until this day, however, a dialect classification based on quantitative methods is lacking and the criteria for the traditional classification are also far from clear. In order to address this problem, the paper uses parallel text material (the questionnaires from Georg Wenker's “Sprachatlas des Deutschen Reichs”) and character n-grams (tri­grams). Applying cosine distance to the trigram inventories of 55 North Frisian questionnaires, the paper employs several dimension re­duction techniques, e. g. multidimensional scaling, Neighbor-Net and hierarchical cluster analysis and compares the results with the traditional classification. While the latter can be confirmed to a large extent, the distinctions within Southern Mainland North Frisian seem to be less clear. Using an association measure (log-likelihood), prominent features are extracted for the six main dialect groups that emerge on basis of the aggregated data. Finally, the paper discusses the quality of the North Frisian Wenker questionnaires in the light of these findings.