Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2008, Page 103

LÁNISTICIN OG DANSKT í FØROYSKUM
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2a) ...tí hann koyrir ravuliga ofta forbí meg.
...because he drives very often [PP past
[DP me-acc.]]
‘...because he very often drives past me'
(Kvinna.fo. 17/01/07, accessed 15/02/09).
2b) Ein veninda og eg gingi forbí ein handil.
a friend and I walked [PP past [DP a
store-acc.]]
‘Me and a friend walked past a store.’
(www.olivant.fo, 22/02/07; accessed 15/02/08).
The preposition óansceð ‘despite’ is a calque
based on Danish u-an-set = Far. ó-an-
sæð/scett Lit.: ‘un-on-see/seen’. It selects an
accusative DP in Far., as óansceð úrslitið ‘de-
spite the result’ (Dimma 08/13/08) and is
productive, as it does not have any specific
selection with regard to the following DP.
Turning now to circumpositions, they
are: frá...av ‘from...of’, av...til ‘of...to‘,
við...frá/fyri ‘with...on/off’.
Faroese/ra...av is borrowed from Danish
/ra...a/‘from...of’ as in han varsygfra ungaf
Lit.: he was sick from young of ‘he was sick
from young age on'. This circumposition is
borrowed into Faroese in, for example,/rø
upphavi av Lit.: from beginning-dat. of'from
the beginning' with the structure [pp frá [PP
upphavi] av]], cf. German circumpositions
[pp unter [PP der Brúcke] durch]] Lit.: under
the bridge through 'passing under the
bridge' and English [pp from [PP the third
floor] down]].
An example of the circumpositon
við...frá is seen in bilurin bíðaði við motorin-
umfrá Lit.: car-the-nom. waited with engine-
the-dat. from 'the car waited with the engine
on’.
This is not a simple borrowing as with
frá...av corresponding to Danish/ra...a/. In-
stead, it is modeled on Danish bilen ventede
med motoren igang Lit.: car-the-nom. waited
with engine-the in going 'with the engine on’,
or bilen ventede med motoren tilsluttet ‘with
the engine connected’ from the verb tilslutte
'to connect'.
Additionally, there is the circumposition
av helviti til 'Lit.: 'from hell to' as in far av
helviti til! Lit.: go from hell to = 'go to hell!',
which does not make any sense semantically.
It is modeled on the Danish collocate ad
helvede til Lit.: to hell to = 'to hell’. In av ...til
in Faroese, speakers seem to have taken the
Faroese preposition that sounds most similar
to the Danish ad ‘to', this apparently being av
'from’.
To summarize, there are only two bor-
rowed Danish prepositions that are produc-
tive in Faroese, those being forbí 'past' and
óansceð 'in spite of'. Two are archaic and were
only found in the Ballad Language; they are
foruttan 'besides' and íblant ‘among’. The
prepositions bak 'behind', pá 'on' and tross ‘in
spite of' were only seen in collocates. People
use three different strategies in borrowing
circumpositions from Danish into Faroese.
The first is the simple word-for-word trans-
lation of/ra begyndelsen af=>frá upphavi av
Lit.: from beginning of ‘from the beginning’.
The second is a calque, in which igang Lit.: on
going 'on' is translated as frá 'on' as the Dan-
ish past participle is tilsluttet 'connected’, re-
sulting in the circumpositions við...frá
'with...on'.This indicates that language repli-
cation is not mere copying (Heine & Kuteva
2005:81). A third and admittedly strange
possibility also exists, though it is restricted
to the collocate: av helviti til Lit.: from hell to
‘to hell'.