Hasil untuk "North Germanic. Scandinavian"

Gjert Kristoffersen

This article is an investigation of the acoustic properties of the so-called level stress prosody still found in some varieties of North Germanic. Level stress occurs in disyllabic words where a light root syllable has been preserved from Old North Germanic, and is described as having stress more or less evenly distributed across the two syllables. It is argued that level stress is the result of a perceptual ambiguity caused by the delayed synchronization of the accent 2 melody in level stress words, due to the shorter duration of the light root syllable. Due to this delay, both syllables may be interpreted as independent tonal and thereby stressed accent 1 domains, competing with the “normal” interpretation of the two syllables as an accent 2 domain with initial stress.*

Bernhard Rohrbacher

University of Lodz, Krzysztof Tomasz Witczak, Mikołaj Rychło et al.

This paper examines the Scandinavian terminology for ‘soot’ in connection with a number of Saami appellatives with a view to deciding which of them are native and which result from borrowing. Special attention is paid to the problem of adopting loanwords in Northern Europe, especially in the Scandinavian Peninsula. Two Proto- Germanic words denoting ‘soot’ are discussed from the morphological and etymological point of view. It is suggested that the West Germanic noun *hrōta- m./n. ‘soot’ is closely related to PG. *sōta- n. ‘soot’, which, in turn, is derived from the Proto-Indo- European verbal root *sed- ‘to sit’. The present authors intend to demonstrate that WG. *hrōta- derives from the Indo-European archetype *ku̯u-sōdo- ‘bad soot; thick layer of soot’, originally ‘what a soot!’. The original semantic distinction between PG. *sōta- and WG. *hrōta- seems to be preserved in the use of two independent Saamic loanwords, cf. Saa.N suohtti ‘soot (in the chimney)’ and ruohtti ‘big layer of soot’. The remaining Northern Saami words under analysis include čađđa ‘charcoal, soot’ (< Proto-Saamic *će̮δe̮ ‘carbon, charcoal, soot, grime’ < Ur. *ćüδ́i ‘coal, charcoal’), giehpa ‘soot’ (< PSaa. *kēpe̮ ‘id.’, probably a Proto-Baltic loanword) and gožu ~ gohčču- ‘soot, layer of soot, deposit of smoke or soot on things near a fireplace’ (< PSaa. *kočɔ̄j ‘soot’). Establishing the etymologies of this rich Saami terminology concerning ‘soot’ is significant to the gradual change of Saami lifestyle from a nomadic hunter-gatherer one towards a nonperipatetic community reliant on farming, animal husbandry and fishing.

Free International University of Moldova, Igor А. Bondar

The new rhombus-shaped cast amulet of the 10th century, made in the Borre style by means of the openwork metalworking technique, is a unique example of the Scandinavian jewelry tradition. The amulet originated from the region of the middle Dniester. The amulet and graffito are unique and they have no direct known analogies. This article is devoted to the study of semiotics and semantics of a zoomorphic pendant and elements of its image. The study carried out a structural-semantic analysis of the composition and individual elements of ornament through the paradigm of cosmological and cosmogonic representations of the ancient Germans. The work used the comparative method as well as a wide range of archaeological and literary sources. The picture stones and runic stones, Hogback stones, objects of material culture of the ancient Germans, results of comprehensive archaeological research, Old Norse songs about the gods and heroes of the “Younger Edda”, a set of Scandinavian sagas, Icelandic Viking sagas about Old Rus’ and materials from written sources of the XI– XIII Centuries were examined in detail and compared. The novelty of the research lies not only in the uniqueness of the new early medieval Scandinavian amulet, but also in the comparison and study of the object through the lens of the literary heritage of German- Scandinavian mythology. This approach was first applied in the detailed study of the “Gnezdovo-type” pendants. The methodological approach of the research and the historical-typological and semantic-semiotic analysis led to a scientific interpretation of the depicted story of the amulet within the context of the ancient Germanic mythological system and cosmogony.

Jackson Crawford

John Ole Askedal

Most work devoted to the delineation and development of West Germanic focuses on its prehistory and early history as a branch of Germanic. The present contribution rather wishes to draw attention to certain characteristic differences between the present-day (High) German, Dutch, (West) Frisian and English standard languages which may appear interesting in view of their presumably common West Germanic origin. The discussion is based on a number of morphosyntactic phenomena that have proved useful in current studies of linguistic typology, including in particular word order and case-marking as well as certain characteristic features of verb constructions and verb morphology.

Tomas Riad

John C. Blankenagel

Sten G. Flygt

Karin Fjellhammer Seim

Gerhard P. Knapp