Converging languages, diverging varieties
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Steffen Höder
Abstract
In the Late Middle Ages, when Old Swedish develops into a written language it acquires simultaneously several innovative syntactic features, such as new relativisation patterns. On the basis of an annotated digital corpus of Late Old Swedish texts, appositive relative clauses and the pronominal relativisation strategy are singled out as the typologically most salient innovations. In this contribution the author argues that the emergence of these features has to be explained as a grammatical replication of Latin features in a process of language Ausbau. Furthermore, it is argued that these changes affect only the emerging written variety of Old Swedish and mark the beginning of a medial split, with the written language converging towards Latin and diverging from the spoken varieties.
Abstract
In the Late Middle Ages, when Old Swedish develops into a written language it acquires simultaneously several innovative syntactic features, such as new relativisation patterns. On the basis of an annotated digital corpus of Late Old Swedish texts, appositive relative clauses and the pronominal relativisation strategy are singled out as the typologically most salient innovations. In this contribution the author argues that the emergence of these features has to be explained as a grammatical replication of Latin features in a process of language Ausbau. Furthermore, it is argued that these changes affect only the emerging written variety of Old Swedish and mark the beginning of a medial split, with the written language converging towards Latin and diverging from the spoken varieties.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- Introduction 1
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Part I. Challenges to accepted views of convergence and divergence in language contact situations
- Divergence, convergence, contact 13
- Increases in complexity as a result of language contact 41
- Converging genetically related languages 53
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Part II. Convergence and divergence in different varieties in oral and written discourse
- Converging languages, diverging varieties 73
- Converging verbal phrases in related languages 101
- Convergence and divergence of communicative norms through language contact in translation 125
- On the importance of spontaneous speech innovations in language contact situations 153
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Part III. Phonological processes of variation and change in bilingual individuals
- Gradient merging of vowels in Barcelona Catalan under the influence of Spanish 185
- Comparing the representation of iambs by monolingual German, monolingual Spanish and bilingual German-Spanish children 205
- Author index 235
- Subject index 239
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- Introduction 1
-
Part I. Challenges to accepted views of convergence and divergence in language contact situations
- Divergence, convergence, contact 13
- Increases in complexity as a result of language contact 41
- Converging genetically related languages 53
-
Part II. Convergence and divergence in different varieties in oral and written discourse
- Converging languages, diverging varieties 73
- Converging verbal phrases in related languages 101
- Convergence and divergence of communicative norms through language contact in translation 125
- On the importance of spontaneous speech innovations in language contact situations 153
-
Part III. Phonological processes of variation and change in bilingual individuals
- Gradient merging of vowels in Barcelona Catalan under the influence of Spanish 185
- Comparing the representation of iambs by monolingual German, monolingual Spanish and bilingual German-Spanish children 205
- Author index 235
- Subject index 239
