Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2008, Page 99

97
The borrowing scale and Danish
in Faroese
Lánistigin og danskt íføroyskum
Hjalmar P Petersen
SFB Mehrsprachigkeit, Max-Brauer-Allee 60, 22765
Email: hjalmar.petersen@uni-hamburg.de
Úrtak1
Har tað snýr seg um málmót, kann roknast við ávirkan
ímillum málini. í hvussu er fer annað málið altíð at
ávirka hitt, og sæst henda ávirkan aftur í fonologiini,
morfologiini, syntaksinum og diskursinum.
Úrslitið av málmótinum er ymisk stig av lánum.
Føroyskt hevur verið fyri danskari ávirkan í øldir. Tað
hevur við sær, at fleiri donsk tøkuorð eru í føroyskum
og ymisk strukturell lán eisini. Nú á døgum kann sig-
ast, at føroyskt liggur ímillum íslendskt og tey megin-
landskandinavisku málini syntaktiskt, og at tað er eitt
miðnorðurlendskt mál, hóast tað alt meira broytir seg
móti teimum meginlandskandinavisku málunum.
Abstract
When two languages are in contact, we expect at least
one of them to influence the other with regard to
phonology, morphology, syntax and discourse.
Language contact results in different stages of
borrowing. Faroese has been the subject of Danish
influence for centuries, resulting in numerous loan-
words and different structural borrowings. Today we
can say that Faroese does not behave as a typical Insu-
lar Scandinavian language (lcelandic) or as a typical
Mainland Scandinavian language (Danish, Norwegian,
Swedish), falling instead in many cases in between the
two as a Mid-Scandinavian language, though with a
tendency to change towards the Mainland Scandina-
vian languages.
Hamburg, Týskland
1 Introduction
In their book Language Contact, Creolization
and Genetic Linguistics from 1988, S.G. Tho-
mason and T. Kaufman set up a Borrowing
Scale (BS). The scale consists of five steps
(Thomason & Kaufman (1988:74 ff)), which
include different stages of lexical and struc-
tural borrowings depending on language
contact.
The goal of this paper is to look at the
Faroese-Danish language contact situation
and to investigate to what extent the BS is
applicable.
Steps 2 and 3 of the scale appear to be
the most promising, but as Step 2 only men-
tions conjunctions and adverbial particles as
borrowed function words, it can be ruled
out. Step 4 can also be ruled out, as it inclu-
des distinctive features of the donor langu-
age and new syllable structures.
The organization of the paper is as fol-
lows: the first section concentrates on
Methodology, followed by the introduction
of Step 3. The borrowing scale is then app-
lied to Faroese, in which I explore Danish
influence in (i) lexical borrowings, (ii) pre-
positions and circumpositions, (iii) conjunc-
tions, (iv) derivational sufhxes, (v) inflectio-
Fróðskaparrit 56. bók 2008:97-115