Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2010, Page 120

ii8 Hjalmar P. Petersen
A fourth possibility is that we are in fact witnessing a combination of all
or some of these factors.
The examples in (ib,d) are not the only analytic constructions in
Faroese, but I will concentrate here on the changes involved in these con-
structions since they are the ones I have the most data on,3 mainly from
grammaticality judgment tests and searches in two Faroese databases
online. The main conclusion is that the changes are internally motivated
but accelerated by language contact. Additionally, age seems to play a cer-
tain role.
The article is organized as follows: After this brief introduction, I will
present a short section on the social settings of Faroese. This is followed
by the empirical research, where I present the methodology and the
changes at hand. In section 4,1 address the question of what triggers the
change. This is followed by a short conclusion.
2. The social settings of Faroese
Faroese and Danish have been in contact since the Reformation (1540 on
the Faroe Islands) and it is necessary to have a good understanding of the
historical and social dynamics that exist between the languages in contact
if we wish to determine the degree to which language changes in Faroese
are externally influenced.
As discussed by Aikhenvald (2008), the more extensive the contact
between a source language (here Danish) and a recipient language (here
Faroese), and the higher the degree of bilingualism, the more transfers are
(obviously) expected. A bilingual language situation is one premise for
structural change and more extensive grammatical borrowings are expect-
ed in a situation of stable, well-established bilingualism (Aikhenvald
2008:36). Other factors that promote borrowing include speakers’ atti-
tudes towards the source language, the age of acquisition of the source
language, and the domains in which the receiving language is being and
has been used, both written and spoken. As we will see below, the posi'
tion of Danish as a source language on the Faroe Islands is quite strong
from this point of view and the position of Faroese as a recipient lan'
3 Other constructions where an analytic PP has replaced a synthetic case marked NP
include complement position of some adjectives as in Skatturin er hdíttisligur fyri búskapi'1
‘The tax(N) is dangerous for the economy(A).’ In Icelandic it is still possible to use a dative
case here, although the PP is more colloquial: Skatturinn erh&ttttlegurefnahagslífinu/fyrt'
efnahagslífið = (lit.) “The tax is dangerous the economy(D)/for the economy(A).’’