Hypothesis: Loanwords borrowed as undecomposed wholes

We can only speculate on how foreign prefixes actually made their way into Scandinavian, but based on studies of English, for example, we can assume that affixed words are first borrowed as undecomposed wholes, i.e., as monomorphemic forms. Speakers of the borrowing language are usually not aware of the internal make-up of these loanwords initially, and sometimes never become aware of it. Take for example the Norwegian loanword slalom in English. Not many people are aware – or were aware at the time it was borrowed (early 20^th century) – that in its source language, slalom started out as a compound. However, often it is the case that complex loanwords are eventually detected as complex forms, i.e., later, when more words containing the same prefix or suffix are introduced into the language, speakers begin to notice the

similarities, and detect a complex structure. Only then do these words start to be seen as being composed of stem and affix, or of two constituents. This is something that never happened to the word slalom in English, German, or even in Swedish, most likely because no other sla- words were borrowed into these languages. Proof of its non-compound status in Swedish comes from its accent, which is Accent 1, instead of compound Accent 2.⁷³

By examining Latin loanwords in English, i.e., words with the Latin suffix {-ity}, Lahiri &

Fikkert (1999) found two different types of evidence indicating that affixed words are not borrowed as morphologically complex words in the eyes (or ears) of the borrower. Firstly, dates of first occurrences found in the Oxford English Dictionary revealed that words suffixed with {-ity} were borrowed by English speakers at earlier dates than their bases. Secondly, these differing dates can often be substantiated by differences in the meanings of the bases and the prefixed words – showing that they were not necessarily directly related (e.g. sane ‘sound in mind’ [1628], sanity ‘†bodily health’ [1432], cf. Lahiri & Fikkert 1999:250). Thirdly, we can add, that there is also prosodic evidence of complex words being borrowed as undecomposed, as established by Lahiri & Dresher (1999), Dresher & Lahiri (2005). These studies found that borrowed nouns containing affixes can also be shown to have followed the metrical constraints of monomorphemic words.

We interpret this evidence as indicating that borrowed affixed verbs most likely also came into Scandinavian as morphologically simplex independent verbs. These verbs were then assigned Accent 1 – exactly like the polysyllabic English verbs that we just discussed in Stene's study, e.g. 'foxtrotte1 ‘to fox trot’ (Stene 1940).

2.2.1. Verbs with unstressed prefixes

Considering first the loans with unstressed prefixes, we know that verbs with unstressed prefixes all have Accent 1 in both Central Swedish and Standard East Norwegian. Our claim is that these complex verbs, e.g. be'tale ‘to pay’, came into the language, and were decomposed into base and affix, i.e., {be}{tale}, as more be- words were borrowed. The subsequent generations established a morphological relationship between the affixed verbs and that of the

73. According to the OED slalom was borrowed from Norwegian sla ‘sloping’ and lom ‘track’. An interesting twist is that slalåm has Accent 2 in Norwegian, but in Swedish it is written slalom and has Accent 1. The reason for the discrepancy in accent and spelling is that Swedish borrowed slalom from English and assigned it Accent 1.

inherited non-prefixed counterparts (e.g. betale and tale (origins MLG, ON respectively)).

Speakers, furthermore, became aware that the accent of the inherited bases ('tale2 ‘to speak’) and that of the prefixed verbs did not coincide (be'tale1 ‘to pay’). The bases all had Accent 2, and the prefixed verbs Accent 1. Speakers naturally attributed the Accent 1 to the prefixes, i.e., in this case to the {be+} morpheme. Thus, the lexical specification came to be associated with the prefixes – and new words coined with these now lexically specified prefixes also received lexical Accent 1. We maintain that this process applies to all prefixed verbs, even to verbs with stressed particles (cf. (9)), and with stressed suffixes (cf. (4)).

The next question is why these words with unstressed prefixes received Accent 1 from the start? We believe that MLG loans with unstressed prefixes initially had Accent 1 because prosodically there were no similar words in the borrowing language for them to pattern after.

As we just explained in section 2.1.2, ON no longer had words with unstressed prefixes. The majority of prefixed words had stress on the prefixes, and these were predominantly nouns. We can assume that these nouns most likely had Accent 2, because they still do in both languages today. Thus, because these new loan verbs did not have a native pattern to fit into, they received Accent 1, which we will discuss in more detail in section 3.

However, the explanation of why verbs with certain stressed prefixes have Accent 1 (and others do not) will require a bit more consideration. We also need to consider nouns with stressed prefixes to obtain the whole picture of how prefixed words, and especially loans, are incorporated into a language, which we do in section 2.2.3.

2.2.2. Verbs with stressed prefixes

We start out by investigating the following complex verbs – the first two of which are borrowed from MLG, and the third of which is modelled on a MLG verb using native components.

(14) MLG Loan verbs with stressed prefixes

Swedish Norwegian Gloss

'avkorta2 'a+vkorte1 to shorten

'ankomma2 'a+nkomme1 to arrive

'meddela2 'me+ddele1 to announce

In Norwegian, these complex verbs bear lexical specification for Accent 1, just like verbs with unstressed prefixes, and the polysyllabic loan verbs we saw in Stene (1940) listed in (12f-i). When MLG verbs with stressed prefixes were borrowed into the language, we claim that they received Accent 1, because – as we just argued for words with unstressed prefixes – they did not fit into a existing prosodic pattern. Although at that time we know that there were words with native prefixes, which were also bore stress, the majority of these words were nouns. These prefixed nouns have Accent 2 today in both Central Swedish and Standard East Norwegian (e.g. 'avgift2 ‘fee’, 'avund2 ‘envy’). Indicating that the prefixes are lexically unspecified for accent. However, as we already mentioned, there were also a few verbs with native stressed prefixes that survived, because they were heavy as can be seen below in (15).

(15) Native stressed prefixed verbs with {mis-}, {jam-/jäm-}, {sam-}⁷⁴

Swedish Norwegian Source Gloss

'misslika2 'mislike2 ON mislíka to dislike

'jämföra2 'jamføre2 FS iämföra to compare

'jämlika2 (†) 'jamlike2NOUN FS iämlika to compare

'samtala2 'samtale2 FS samtala to converse

'samordna2 'samordne2 to coordinate

These verbs all consist of native components, and all still exist today in both Swedish and Norwegian, therefore, we infer that there must have also been native verbs with stressed prefixes early in the development of Scandinavian when the MLG loans were coming in. Why then did the borrowed verbs with stressed prefixes not follow these existing patterns in Standard East Norwegian and receive Accent 2? Unlike the verbs with unstressed prefixes, which had no native pattern to conform to, these loans with stressed prefixes appear to have native examples to follow. Let us first take a step back and consider the whole picture of prefixed words, starting with nouns with stressed prefixes, which apparently did have a pattern to follow, before we give our analysis of verbs with stressed prefixes and all prefixed words in section 3.

74. The abbreviation “FS” refers to fornsvensk or Old Swedish and corresponds to a time period from 800–1526 AD (Wessén 1970).

2.2.3. Nouns with stressed prefixes

Up to now, we have maintained that nouns with stressed prefixes all follow the same pattern and have Accent 2. This applies to Central Swedish, however, in Standard East Norwegian this is not completely true, not all nouns with stressed prefixes have Accent 2. Some nouns with stressed prefixes have Accent 1 as can be seen below.

(16) Norwegian: Deverbal nouns with a suffix are Accent 1, else Accent 2 Nominalization

Verb

with suffix else Gloss (VERB/ NOUN)

a. 'anfalle1 'anfall2 to attack/ attack

b. 'avtale1 'avtale2 to agree /appointment

c. 'anlegge1 'anlegg2 to construct/ foundation

d. 'anmelde1 'anmeldelse1 to review/ report (crime)

e. 'anordne1 'anordning1 to prescribe/ ordinance

The generalisation for Standard East Norwegian seems to be on the one hand, that if a prefixed noun has a nominalizing suffix, it is derived from a prefixed verb, and retains the lexical Accent 1 of the verb as in (16d) and (16e).⁷⁵ On the other hand, if the noun is not derived from the verb by the addition of a suffix, i.e., it is a zero derivation, it will have Accent 2. Our explanation for this accentual difference is that the prefixed nouns in (16a–c) are not derived, but borrowed independently from the verb and assigned Accent 2 in line with the pattern of native prefixed nouns. To support this claim, following Lahiri & Fikkert’s (1999) study, we consulted etymological dictionaries to find out when these borrowed nouns and verbs were first noted in Scandinavian. Similar to Lahiri & Fikkert (1999), we also found that Scandinavian verb and noun pairs such as 'anfalle1 – 'anfall2 were in fact borrowed at different times, which we list below (adapted from Wetterlin, Lahiri & Jönsson-Steiner 2007).

75. Wiese (1996:295) also finds proof that these kinds of nouns in High German – that are prefixed with a nominalizing suffix – also “are derived from verbs or at least have a base which is verbal.”

(17) First written occurrences of Norwegian prefixed verbs and nouns

Norwegian 1^st occurrence Gloss

'anfall2 NOUN 1525 attack (of disease)

'anfalle1 VERB 1544 to assault

'anbringe1 VERB 1649 to locate

'anbringelse1 NOUN derived from 'anbringe1 location

'anholde1 VERB 1749 to arrest

'anholdelse1 NOUN derived from 'anholde1 arrest

'ankomme1 VERB 1541 to arrive

'ankomst1 NOUN 1565 arrival

This data allows us to infer two things. First, that the nouns with stressed prefixes, but without nominalizing suffixes, are most likely borrowed separately from the corresponding verbs. Second, that nouns with stressed prefixes and nominalizing suffixes are not borrowed, but most commonly derived from Accent-1 verbs.⁷⁶ We claim that prefixed nouns received Accent 2, and that verbs were assigned Accent 1 because of the prosodic and syntactic structures they had in the donor language. Therefore, to confirm this hypothesis, our next step is to examine how these words patterned in the source language.