Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2008, Page 104

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THE BORROWING SCALE AND DANISH IN FAROESE
6. Conjunctions
Conjunctions are supposed to be borrowed
during Stage 2. The following conjunctions
are borrowed into Faroese: dersum 'if',
eftirsum 'because', líkasum 'like' and sosum
'like, as'.
Eftirsum 'because' is frequently seen in
written Faroese. In Sprákbanken, I found 115
occurrences with this conjunction and none
with dersum 'if’, even though it is not un-
common in spoken Faroese. I was addition-
ally able to find two examples of dersum on
the internet.
87 examples of líkasum 'like' were seen
in Sprákbanken, though none with sosum
'like, as'. The results of searching for this con-
junction on the internet indicate that it is ac-
tually used very frequently.
7. Derivational suffixes
Thomasson and Kaufmann (1988) claim that
derivational affixes can be abstracted away
from the borrowed words at Stage 3 and
added to the native vocabulary. This is ex-
actly what happens with -arí-n. (< Dan. -ari-
n.), -heit-f. (< Dan. -hed-f.) and -ilsi-n. (< Dan.
-e/se-cg.). Note that the suffix -e/se has chan-
ged its gender to neuter in Faroese.
The -arí suffix has spread to native words
in the following lexical items, amongst oth-
ers. Note that the words below are not bor-
rowed from Danish, which in turns shows
that the suffix is productive in Faroese.
at darta 'to walk with stiff legs' => dartarí 'rest-
lessness', at garta 'to make noise' => gartari
'noise’, at jagla 'to munch' => jaglarí 'munching'
at mala 'to gad about' malarí 'trissing about', at
narra 'to fool' => narrarí 'have fun with’, at ropa
'to burp' => roparí 'burping', at sjora 'to speed'
= > sjorarí 'speeding', at sora 'to crush' => sorari
'crushing', at si/ika 'to cheat’ => svikari 'cheating'.
Donsk-føroysk orðabók (1995).
The suffix -heit is also productive in Faroese:
bangheit 'anxiety', bæriligheit 'to be considerable'
rcettvorðinheit 'normality’, sansaligheit 'sensual-
ism’, svinnheit 'reservation’.
Donsk-føroysk orðabók (1995).
The suffix -ilsi is also productive, as seen in
the noun rimpilsi 'nymphomania’, a word
that was attested in the late 18th century in
the dictionary manuscripts of J. C. Svabo
(1746-1824).
Some other nouns in which -ilsi is pro-
ductive are listed below.
bangilsi ‘anxiety', bindilsi ‘constipation', garterilsi
'noise', hampilsi 'order', illneitilsi 'bad temper', ját-
tilsi 'consent', lammiterilsi 'noise', manrerilsi 'mov-
ing about', nøtrilsi 'trembling', piprilsi 'trembling’,
rokilsi 'fuss', skapilsi 'form', skepilsi 'shape, figure',
uggilsi 'comfort', víðilsi 'open field’, ørilsi 'dizziness'.
Donsk-føroysk orðabók (1995).
8. The —s plural
Spoken Faroese uses the suffixes -ar, -(i)ror
-0 in the plural, in which -ar is used mainly
in masculine nouns and -ir primarily in fem-
inine nouns, while the zero ending is mainly
restricted to neuter nouns, (Petersen 2008,
Petersen and Adams 2008).
The only borrowed inflectional ending is
the English plural -s. This suffix is presum-
ably borrowed into Faroese from Danish,
though we need to keep in mind that the in-
fluence of English in Faroese is increasing.
It should be noted that the plural end-