Hasil untuk "Germanic languages. Scandinavian languages"

Elliott Evans

This article unifies two adjectival phenomena of Germanic languages: the double definiteness of Norwegian, Swedish, and Faroese, and the attributive-only inflection of West Germanic adjectives. I argue that the functional head Agr(eement) is responsible for both. Since Agr can perform only one of these two functions in a given language (the second definiteness marker of Scandinavian and the attributive inflection of West Germanic), these two phenomena are in complementary distribution. *

Vogel Friedemann

Albrecht Classen

The topic of mobility contributes in multiple ways to a deeper understanding of cultural history. The degree of mobility has much to say about the development of any society, both in the past and in the present. This paper examines the situation in sixteenth-century Europe through the lens of literary documents in which we can find comments on travel, mobility, and world perspectives. While it might not be possible to identify explicit documents from that period reflecting on mobility itself (technologies, modes of transportation, hospitality, healthcare, finances, etc.), many authors actually included valuable references to this phenomenon, if we only look more closely. The literary narrative thus emerges as an important source of information about social, emotional, economic, religious, and also travel aspects, such as shipping, use of a coach, a horse, or mule, staying in early-modern ‘hotels,’ roads, and bridges. As the analysis will demonstrate, early modern society was highly mobile, with representatives of many different social classes on the move for a wide range of reasons. Whereas the authors consulted here did not specifically signal their interest in reflecting on mobility as such, they commonly reveal that the narrative framework mirrors events on the road, on a ship, or at meetings where many people attended, such as a Church council, an imperial diet, and the like. The need to travel grew tremendously in the sixteenth century, and this for many different reasons. One of the consequences was that poets increasingly engaged with a highly mobile society.

B. Dresher

I discuss an analysis of changes in the Scandinavian runic alphabet, or futhark, by Jørgen Rischel (1966). Rischel’s article accounts for some puzzling changes in the futhark by employing contrastive feature hierarchies represented as branching trees. Feature hierarchies can be traced back to the work of Roman Jakobson and his colleagues. They enjoyed a brief period of prominence in the 1950s and 1960s, but then disappeared from mainstream phonological theory. However, they were employed in a number of interesting studies of Germanic and other languages whose insights we can still profit from today. The goal of this paper is to bring attention to this largely forgotten approach to phonological analysis, and to spell out the principles that underlie it.

T. Mikhailova

A limited number of Scandinavian loanwords in Irish represent a group of motivated borrowings connected with cultural influence, including trade, fishing, weaponry, markets, dress, and shipbuilding. The direct sources of these loanwords could also be of Anglo-Saxon origin, reflecting the cultural and social impact on the Irish language. Some terms have Latin origin and even more have parallels in other Celtic languages. In some cases, the presence of lexical doublets is observed. Later, they are distributed according to dialect zones or disappear from language use. The paper concentrates on three lexemes representing complex and controversial cases. The Irish terms accaire, séol, and bord could have been borrowed from Scandinavian language regions, but at the same time might have come from other sources. Their semantic development represents non-standard cases, due to the specific Irish point of view. The anchor designation in Irish is known from the VII—VIII century and represents a Latin borrowing — ingor. It is mainly used to denote something that morally attracts a person, not always in a positive sense. Subsequently, it merges with a Scandinavian loanword in a hybrid form ancaire. The lexeme séol denotes sail but also signifies the semantic transition from cloth, coverlet to bed. The etymology is disputable, and it may have an autochthonous origin. The noun bord is found in relatively later texts. Its origin is debated (whether it is a Scandinavian loan or an Old English borrowing), and following the pattern seen in the English language, it evolves to mean table, and from there, the semantic extension to division, department occurs (cf. Russian stolonachalnik).

A. Alexiadou, Terje Lohndal

It is well known that German and Dutch have productive diminutive morphology. What is much less discussed is the fact that several other Germanic languages do not have such productive morphology, notably the Scandinavian languages. Instead, these languages form compounds to express a diminutive meaning. This paper addresses the puzzle of why the Scandinavian languages do not have productive diminutive morphology. The paper argues that the culprit is the particular definite suffix that the Scandinavian languages have. This is a postnominal definite suffix that occupies a low position in the nominal functional spine. It is argued that the presence of this suffixed article accounts for the lack of productive synthetic diminutive formation in these languages.

Agata Kowalska-Szubert, Zuzanna Czerwonka-Wajda

Luis Krausz

Este artigo discute a imagem do Brasil nos romances brasileiros de Robert Menasse Sinnliche Gewißheit e Selige Zeiten, brüchige Welt. Os conceitos de sensualidade e de regressão desempenham um papel central nos enredos desses romances, relacionando-se, particularmente, com os retratos que o autor faz dos brasileiros. O alívio que a mímese e a regressão proporcionam ao indivíduo, como mostra Jeanne-Marie Gagnebin, estão na base de um prazer dionisíaco, que é associado por Menasse aos brasileiros. Esta experiência mimética relaciona-se ao abandono de identidades culturais cristalizadas e à dissolução do “eu” no sonho (ou pesadêlo) coletivo chamado por Hegel de sinnliche Gewissheit. Suas representações no romance podem ser entendidas como críticas ao Brasil à época do fim da ditadura militar.

A. Romanchuk

Having argued a new version of etymology of the ethnonym Rus’ from the East Germanic *rauþs ‘red’ last year, the author suggests to consider the names of Varangians and Rus’, represented by “The Tale of Begone Years” and puts a question if these names reflected the supposed East-Germanic influence as well. As a result of the analysis he comes to conclusion that the anthroponyms of the so called “Russian-Varangian dialect” (by S. L. Nikolaev), as well as another group of Varangian names from “The Tale of Begone Years” (the “Rus’ of Stemid and Lidulf”, as the author proposed to name this group) demonstrates some phonetic features, that find no analogies in any Scandinavian dialect at the studied time, but such analogies could be found in the East Germanic languages (East and Visigothic, Vandal, Herulian, and Burgundian). In particular, these features are represented by the transition of the Old Germanic diphthong *ai > ē (including *ai > ē >i), the transition of *ō > u, as well as falling away of *h in anlaut (especially before the vowels). According to the author, the phonetic parallels that are being discovered encourage us, at least, to discuss the question of the supposed East-Germanic contribution to the origin of the ethnonym Rus’ as well as to the origin of primordial Rus’ people.

Andrii Zubko

The development of the economy in the territories of modern Germany, the peninsulas of Jutland and Scandinavia, inhabited since ancient times by tribes that spoke Germanic languages, required the use of various measures, the units of which must be related to each other. Since primitive times, the Germans, like other peoples of the world, used the so-called primitive natural measures, the standards of which were borrowed from nature itself. The political disunity of the Germanic tribes led to their lack of a single system of measures. However, a generally accepted standard of weight measures appeared with them. It was a mass of wheat or barley grain. When using units of measure in production and trade, the calculation was based on the numbers of ten and twenty adopted by the Indo-European peoples. In the II–I century B.C., the Romans conquered the territory of modern Germany to the west bank of the Rhine River. Roman colonies were founded there; the Roman system of measures and the monetary system were put into use. The Germanic lands to the east of the Rhine were not part of the Roman Empire. However, due to political ties and trade exchange with the Roman Empire, Roman monetary and weight measures gradually came into use in these lands. In the first centuries A.D., Germanic tribes attacked the Romans. In the 5th century, the Western Roman Empire fell. The territory of its provinces was conquered by Germanic tribes who created independent kingdoms here. In the 8th century, Charlemagne, the ruler of one of them, namely Frankish, united the former territories of the Western Roman Empire under his authority. In the empire of Charlemagne, a single system of measures was created, in which Roman and German measures were combined. In particular, instead of the Roman siliqua, which is a carob bean, the mass of a barley grain was adopted as the standard of weight. The calculation of units according to this system was conducted not only with the help of Roman numerals for 6 and 12, but also by dividing by the two system and using the decimal system. Charlemagne’s weight measures included units of coin and trade weight. Subsequently, as the analysis of the sources shows, it was on the basis of the Carolingian units of trade weight that systems of weight measures were created in the territories of Germany, Austria and the Scandinavian countries during the Middle Ages. In the 9th century, the Carolingian empire fell apart. In the 10th century, Otto I, the king of Germany, having united under his authority certain territories of Western Europe, announced the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. Later, this state gradually fell apart into separate possessions, the rulers of which introduced their own monetary and weight measures. They were based on the division into marks. Initially, this monetary weight unit was equal to 2/3 of a Roman pound. Subsequently, various stamp weight standards appeared in German lands. From the 15th century, the gold and silver mass standards of the Cologne mark are being distributed in Western Europe. In the second half of the XIX century, the political unification of Germany took place, which coincided with the introduction of the international metric system in the territories of Germany, Austria and the Scandinavian countries.

A. Romanchuk

The author draws attention to a number of important unresolved problems (including those recognized by leading supporters) of the currently dominant variant of the Scandinavian etymology behind of the ethnonym Rus’/русь, He argues a new version of the East Germanic etymology of this ethnonym. Following the explanatory model of “Finno-Germanic militarized groups”, the author believes that for the Roman period we should also assume the existence of such groups (in particular, on Saaremaa, Lanemaa and Virumaa), controlling the sea route along the southern coast of the Baltic — but with the East Germans as the dominant element. East Germanic *rauþs ‘red’ is proposed as the original etymon for русь. Taking into account the phonetic processes characteristic of the East Germanic languages (early contraction of the original Germanic diphthongs and the tendency to increase vowels), a natural stage of evolution of *rauþs ‘red’ should be the form *rōþs. Considering ethnonymic models of the Finnish peoples (and Goths), we should justifiably obtain the form *rōþ (but with the meaning ‘red’) as the original etymon for the Slavic русь.

Annette Kliewer

Die Europäische Gemeinschaft fördert mit Erasmus+ den Austausch von Schulen in Europa. Plattform für die digitale Zusammenarbeit ist eTwinning, ein Tool, das fast nur von Fremdsprachenlehrkräften genutzt wird. Welche Möglichkeiten ein internationales Projekt auch für den Muttersprachenunterricht bietet, wird an einem Beispiel rund um den Jugendbuchklassiker Eine Hand voller Sterne von Rafik Schami gezeigt. In der Lockdown-Situation im Januar/Februar 2021 tauschten sich Schüler*innen der 8. Klasse eines Gymnasiums in der Südpfalz mit Schüler*innen einer polnischen Kunstschule in Rzeszów über dieses Buch aus und erstellten digitale Bilderbücher, die auf eTwinning, aber dann auch analog in einer Ausstellung in einem verlassenen Ladenlokal in der Fußgängerzone von Bad Bergzabern gezeigt wurden.   Abstract (english): Intermedial, intercultural, international : Digital writing with eTwinning in a 8th class With Erasmus+, the European Community supports the exchange of schools in Europe. The platform for digital collaboration is eTwinning, a tool that is used almost exclusively by foreign language teachers. The following pages show the possibilities that an international project also offers for native language teaching around the classic book for young people A Handful of Stars by Syrian author Rafik Schami. In the lockdown situation in January/February 2021, pupils from the 8th grade of a grammar school in the southern Palatinate with pupils from a Polish art school in Rzeszów worked together and created digital picture books, which were presented on eTwinning, but also in analogue form in an exhibition in an abandoned shop in the pedestrian zone.

R. Scheel

Scandinavian Studies in Germany are usually conceived of as comparative literary and cultural studies, encompassing the historical and current spaces where Northern Germanic languages were or are spoken. The article focuses on the current situation of Medieval Scandinavian Studies—one of the three branches of the discipline—in the German-speaking area, explaining their comparatively strong institutional position as a result of the long and peculiar history of the research and its entanglements with political ideology. Against this background, an overview is presented of the present research projects, and current structural and political problems, as well as challenges for the future are discussed.

Jan Budňák

Two aims are pursued in this paper. On the one hand, a connecting line between the novels and the essay work of Ludwig Winder should be shown here by way of example, based on the journalistic treatment of 'people of will and power' who are also central to Winder's novels. On the other hand, based on selected journalistic articles in the Deutsche Zeitung Bohemia (DZB), Winder is to be anchored in the cultural and political milieu of the first Czechoslovak Republic. Both goals should arrive to one conclusion: For Ludwig Winder, many more cultural-political contexts are relevant, than just the few in which his writing to date, primarily in Jewish and German literature in Prague, has been put. The context the relevance of which for Winder is outlined in this article is the one that unfolds from the position of a journalist from Czechoslovakia who writes in German (taking into account, however, the culture, politics and literature in Czech language too).

Dionei Mathias

Feridun Zaimoglu is one of the most important writers in German language to introduce the history and the experiences of immigrants and their forefathers in their literary texts. The novel Leyla, published in 2006, is a paradigmatic example, since its fictional universe presents a temporal configuration that precedes the arrival of the Turkish immigrant in Germany. This article aims to discuss the novel in two aspects: the genesis of a voice in spaces with power imbalance and, on the other side, the genesis of an image of the other in the characters’ personal universe.

D.J. Prinsloo, Theo J.D. Bothma, Ulrich Heid et al.

This article introduces a prototype of a writing (and learning) assistant for verbal relative clauses of the African language Sepedi, accessible from within a dictionary or from a word processor. It is an example of how a user support tool for complicated grammatical structures in a scarcely resourced language can be compiled. We describe a dynamic light-weight tool aimed at combining user-knowledge with text production support, i.e., user-involved interactive text production of the complicated verbal relative in Sepedi. In this article, the focus is on access in a dictionary use situation. Although the tool is intended as a writing assistant to support users in text production; it also satisfies text reception and cognitive needs, but its focus is on solving text production issues related with the interaction between lexical items and complex grammatical structures in the African (Bantu) languages and for learning by users and/or training users in this interaction.

Durrell Martin

Muntigl Peter

Markéta Ederová

This contribution deals with critical consciousness and reflection on uses of language. In the recent context of political developments in Germany there is an intensified discussion about proper application of terms, the power of words and the importance of intellectual reflections on these changements. In 2015 the German language society GfDS declared the word Flüchtling (means refugee) as "Word of the Year", therefore it's probably the best example to undertake such analysis. The term "Flüchtling" exactly is situated on the edge between sensitivity in using language, words, on the one side – and on the other the speechlessness in order to "political correctness". The broader framework of the article discusses then the critical action "Unwort des Jahres" (means most inappropriate word used for special problems) – worth while a liguistic based analysis. The outlinig questions here have to be: is there a guide line, a direction in chosing such "Unworte" and words next to them? Are there linguistic strategies in order to construction of terms, words and its using?

Liezl H. Ball, Theo J.D. Bothma

The Afrikaanse idiome-woordeboek is a prototype e-dictionary of Afrikaans fixed expressions developed with the intention to test the functionalities of the e-dictionary. This dictionary is based on the function theory of lexicography. The e-dictionary makes use of various technologies. When digital tools are developed it is important to consider the usability of the tool. Usability evaluation was done on the Afrikaanse idiome-woordeboek to determine with what success it can be used. Discount usability methods, viz. heuristic evaluation and usability testing were used. This article reports on the findings from the usability tests which are discussed under the categories of content, information architecture, navigation, access (searching and browsing), help, customisation and the use of innovative technologies to manage data in e-dictionaries for search and display. The usability evaluation showed that the users did not always use the e-dictionary as the designers intended. Various recommendations are made to the designers of the Afrikaanse idiome-woordeboek, as well as for the design of e-dictionaries in general. Recommendations appropriate to e-dictionaries in general are made regarding usability evaluation, information architecture, searching in e-dictionaries, the data that can be included in e-dictionaries and training of users of e-dictionaries.