NOWELE. North-Western European Language Evolution - Volume 77, Issue 1, 2024

Abstract

This article compares the commercial knowledge of a Norwegian skipper in the Icelandic Laxdæla saga with the medieval Irish law of the shore, now accessible in recently edited Irish legal tracts. His knowledge of Ireland is matched by the ship’s master, Óláfr paí Hǫskuldsson, son of an enslaved mother but grandson of an Irish king. The essay reviews the possibility of cultural transfers from the medieval Norse-Celtic world of Ireland and the Scottish Isles to settlement-era Iceland in the spheres of story-telling, law, and governance.

Abstract

This article discusses the historical form of the gerund in Old English, attested both as ‑enne and ‑anne. The former is commonly considered to be the historical form, while the latter is thought to have resulted from analogical levelling on the basis of the infinitive that ended in ‑an. The primacy of ‑enne is based on the assumption that i-mutation in unstressed syllables worked to the same extent as in stressed ones, but it is argued that the working of sound laws can be dependent on stress and the quality of the mutation factor. In this paper, I propose that the order should be reversed and that ‑anne is the historical form, while ‑enne probably shows phonological reduction in word-internal position.

Abstract

When the Etymologisches Wörterbuch der friesischen Adjektiva appeared in 2010, the author was well aware that with the complexity of the Frisian linguistic situation and its often unpublished handwritten sources, he would have missed one or two interesting adjectives. Thirteen additional Frisian adjectives have meanwhile been found in other until now less regarded lexicographic material: germ. *auþa‑ ‘easy’, *ferh^wta‑ ‘endowed with a good spirit’, *gillja‑ ‘gaping, protruding’, *hlaupja‑ ‘unpicking, riving’, *krupila‑ ‘crippled’, *lega‑ ‘lying’, *lunka‑ ‘smirched, blotted’, *mūka‑ ‘mellow’, *slunka‑ ‘of reduced quality’, *stamara‑ ‘stammering’, *stamma‑ ‘talking inhibited’, *straka‑ ‘streched’, *sturra‑ ‘stiff, standing off rigidly’. These adjectives will be subjected to an etymological investigation below. This article is the third supplement with such analyses.

Abstract

The article presents a new periodization of the language of the older runic inscriptions (until 750 AD) by dividing the whole period into four subperiods instead of two (i.e. in contrast to Krause’s dichotomy of Frühurnordisch and Späturnordisch). The study focuses on the earliest layers of runic inscriptions in older fuþark, namely the pre-classical and classical group prior to 400/450 AD. The new runic finds from Svingerud in Norway reinforce the notion of an archaic, pre-classical runic layer, starting already c. 1/50 AD. In order to distinguish a pre-classical Nordic period, the nominative singular masculine of the weak n-stems is viewed as a decisive criterion, in particular the masculine nouns in -o. In addition, the article presents a valid diagnostic criterion to distinguish between ‘post-classical’ and ‘transitional’ inscriptions, viz. the phoneme-grapheme-correspondences of the starlike rune . The result of this approach is a quadripartite division of the older-fuþark inscriptions that bridges that span between late North-West Germanic and early Old Norse.

This article reviews Sociolinguistic Variation in Old English: Records of Communities and People