Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 2020, Qupperneq 294

heimir freyr van der feest viðarsson
Replies to Caroline Heycock’s questions
Question 1: The main problem was the rather unclear status of Adv−Vfin in
Icelandic during the medieval and early modern period. I did not know whether
to regard Adv−Vfin mainly as a new, incoming feature based on Danish or as
something that had already been present in the variation pool but did not “catch
on” until later. The picture that emerged, also based on previous research by
Heycock and Wallenberg (2013), was that there are traces of Adv−Vfin to be
found in Old Icelandic. During the 17th and 18th centuries, there is a major
increase in use of Adv−Vfin in the historical record, followed in the 19th century
by a sudden drop in frequency, followed again not simply by the previous state
but rather something different from all previous periods. To me it thus seems
that the rise in Adv−Vfin actually had a lasting effect, even though it may not
have been picked up by the masses in exactly the same form. If it had had no
effect, the Adv−Vfin phenomenon would have been expected to become just as
rare as in the Icelandic sagas, perhaps confined to pronominal/light subjects (as
in Old Swedish, cf. Håkansson 2011). This does not appear to be an accurate
description at all of what we find after 1850 and the failed change scenario is
supposed to capture this fact.
I considered Postma’s (2010) work in this context because I assume that
speakers are influenced by what is going on around them, by the behaviour of
other speakers, including but not limited to the printed media. The elevated uses
of Adv−Vfin in printed texts I thus take to be of importance, in addition to the
fact that Adv−Vfin was widely attested in the private sphere as well. That usage
could serve to fuel the phenomenon for other speakers who use this feature less
frequently and further normalise it. If this feature had not been picked up on at
all (by the higher echelons), chances are it would have remained on the fringe
and at a low frequency, perhaps confined to light elements as in Old Norse. In
that sense, these descriptions are not viewpoints associated with different
groups within society, but they are simultaneous in a way. They end up merging
or converging.
Regarding whether or not the descriptions of norms and social evaluation
simply follow on from each other diachronically, I would argue that they do not
(or not necessarily). The puristic aspects clearly belong to the top-down “above”
level, a conscious incentive to avoid foreign features, imposed on a change that
originally may or may not have been a change from above (targeted change). I
hypothesise that Adv−Vfin has properties of a change both “from below” and