Scandinavian Language Contacts

Description:
This authoritative collection examines both language contacts in Scandinavia proper and also contacts with non-Scandinavian languages. The language situation in Scandinavia is a rich and complex one, yet hitherto little of the material has been available in English. All the essays have as their basic tenet that the essence of every language is the way in which it varies in its development and social use and that this variation is a result of a whole series of geographical, sociological and linguistic factors - settlement, conquest, trade and literary bilingualism. Together they provide a valuable overview of Scandinavian language contacts at both the synchronic and the diachronic level, which will be of interest not only to Germanists and Scandinavianists, but also to historical linguists.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction P. Sture Ureland and Iain Clarkson; Part I. North Scandinavia: 2. Russenorsk: a new look at the Russo-Norwegian pidgin in northern Norway Ingvild Broch and Ernst Hakon Jahr; Part II. East Scandinavia: 3. Language contact as reflected in the migration of the Finns, the Saamis and the Vikings Olavi Korhonen; 4. The Scandinavians in Russia: on the extra-linguistic factors in the language contact between North Germanic and East Slavic peoples in the early middle ages Annelies Lagreid; 5. Parallel internal development or interference? Post-positive article and possessive perfect in North Germanic and Northern Russian Baldur Panzer; 6. The realm of the Rus': a contribution to the problem of the rise of the East-Slavic kingdom Stefan Soderlind; Part III. West Scandinavia: 7. Language contact in the Faroes Bjorn Hagstrom; Part IV. South Scandinavia: 8. Statistical investigations of language death in a North Frisian community Niels-Erik Larsen; 9. Language contact in the German-Danish border region: the problems of interference Bent Sondergaard; Part V. Pan Scandinavia: 10. French transferences with nasal vowels in the graphematics and phonology of the Germanic languages Horst H. Munske; Part VI. Translatlantic Language Contact: 11. The influence of American English on American Swedish - a case study on the nature of interference P. Sture Ureland; Indexes.