Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2021, Síða 158

michael schulte
Comments from the first opponent at
the doctoral defence of Matteo Tarsi

1. Preliminary assessment
Matteo Tarsi has delivered an appealing in-depth study on the interaction be -
tween lexical pairs made up by loanwords and what he refers to as ‘native terms’
in a wide range of Icelandic prose texts from the 13th to the 16th century. The
work intends to show how the Icelandic language coped with the effects of lin-
guistic contact at a time when linguistic creativity and competition had not start-
ed to interact with linguistic purism as it did in the later centuries.
The overarching question addressed by this dissertation is how foreign lexical
material interacts with the native lexicon of medieval Icelandic. The study clearly
fills a gap in the research literature as the medieval lexicon has received much less
attention than the modern lexicon. However, it does not pass unnoticed that
some crucial publications relevant to this topic are not mentioned, particularly
Dietrich Hofmann’s Nordisch-englische Lehnbeziehungen der Wikingerzeit of 1955,
and Ernst Walter’s Lexikalisches Lehngut im Altwestnordischen of 1976. Nikolas
Gunn’s dissertation is absent from the literary review, but referred to in connec-
tion with several lexical items (e.g., pp. 8, 10, 35).
What Matteo labels “native terms” comprises words that were part of the
Ancient Nordic lexicon (including the corpus of the older runic inscriptions), as
well as various types of structures that are based on native lexical material, but
have undergone foreign influence and, therefore, can be classed as different types
of loans (see in particular pp. xxx–xxxiii). The study firmly relies on the estab-
lished typology which can be traced back to Betz (1959):
1. semantic loans, or calques as Matteo refers to them (Germ. Lehn be deutung),
e.g., andskoti, dróttinn, stafr;
2. loan-translations, or structural calques in Matteo’s terminology (Germ.
Lehnübersetzung), e.g., fyrirsetning, heilagr andi, stjǫrnufræði;
3. loan renditions, or neoformations in Matteo’s terminology (Germ.
Lehnschöpfung), e.g., félagi, hǫfuðskepna, borrablað.
Based on the standard reference works (see below, § 3), the thesis provides a
care ful study of the modus operandi of these different types of interaction. By
exploring their dynamics across different centuries and genres, the dissertation