Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2008, Side 114

112
THE BORROWING SCALE AND DANISH IN FAROESE
Heine and Kuteva (2006:97 ff). Faroese be-
haves like Danish and in a manner opposing
lcelandic in:
(15a) Ein maður kom innar. Hann var stórur.
(Far.)
a man-nom. came-3.p.sg. in. He was-
3.p sg. big.
'A man entered. He was big’.
(15b) En mand kom ind. Han var stor (Dan.)
a man-nom. came-3.p.sg. in. He-nom.
was-3.p.sg. big
'A man entered. He was big’.
(15c) Maður kom innar. Hann var stórr (lcl.)
man-nom.sg. came in. He-nom. was-
3.p.sg. big
‘A man entered. He was big’.
Some of the changes above are very likely to
have come about as the result of language
contact. It is not sufficient to explain them
solely as inner changes; after all, how can one
possibly ignore the bilingual language situa-
tion?
12. Cender
In bilingual speech, speakers maintain a sep-
aration of the gender system of L1 and L2
(see Costa et al. 2003). This is not particularly
unexpected, as gender has a huge impact on
agreement and the morphological system
with its different controllers and target gen-
ders.
Danish gender has not influenced Faro-
ese to any large extent, but there are some
few changes as when the common gender -
ilse suffix in Danish as in enjorbindelse 'a con-
nection’ changes to the neuter eittforbindilsi
'a connection’ because of its association with
native nouns like eitt dømi ’an example’. In
contrast, when Faroe Islanders speak Danish,
a very small number of gender faults are wit-
nessed. The most common errors are cases
in which a noun might be referred to with a
corresponding Faroese personal pronoun
but with Danish form, as in en mine ‘a mine’
: hun ‘she’, instead of den ’it’ (K8 Corpus on
Dano-Faroese).
There are other parts of the gender sys-
tem, however, where Danish influence is
greater. An example is the masculine plural
allir ’all’ having changed to the neuter plural
øll ’all’ when referring to people in general.
The use of the masculine in Faroese was
studied by Dee Hansen 2003, in which she
noted that while a teir-m.pl. would have
been used for people in general in 1986, such
a word-use would be inconceivable today
(Dee Hansen 2004:380), as people are more
aware of gender and sex and have borrowed
the Danish discourse. This became apparent
in some of the interviews she conducted
with different newspaper editors.
Danish influence is thus in an example
like (16b):
(16a) De er fá, som har købt hus i ár. (Dan.)
(16b) Tey eru fá, sum hava keypt hús í ár
(Far.)
they-n.pl. are few that have bought house
in year
’They are few, which have bought a house
this year.’
(16c) heir eru fáir, sem hafa keypt hús í ár.
(Icl.)
they-m.pl. are few that have bought
house in year
‘They are few, which have bought house
this year’.