2. Loanword incorporation
2.1. Incorporation of verbs
We begin this section by looking at English loanwords from the early 20th century, and in particular borrowed verbs. This is a group loanwords which are very rarely lexically specified for Accent 1 unless they are polymorphemic. Then we take a large step back in time and investigate how MLG prefixed words were incorporated into Scandinavian, and why they generally received Accent 1.
2.1.1. Simplex verbs: English loans
Our first set of data concerns the incorporation of predominantly monomorphemic verbs from English, based on a study by Stene from 1936 (which appeared as Stene 1940). This study gives us a remarkable insight into how English loanwords from the early 20th century were incorporated into Norwegian. It also allows us to compare what accent they had at a very early stage in Norwegian to the accent that they have today, almost 70 years later.
68. For other studies pursuing this same claim that loanwords do not introduce new phonological contrast to the phonological system of a borrowing language, see Lahiri & Kraehenmann (2004), Lahiri & Kraehenmann (forthcoming), Dresher & Lahiri (2005).
Most donor verbs from English are monosyllabic, yet Stene (1940) also found a few polysyllabic verbs that had also made their way into Norwegian. Below in (12), we list some of these English loan verbs – both mono- and polysyllabic – to show what accent they had in 1936 and in today’s Norwegian.69
(12) English loan verbs (adapted from Stene 1940:37ff) English Norwegian first spellings
h. to handicap > 'handicappe1 'handikappe1
i. to capsize > 'kappseise2/ kap' seise1 'kap(p)seise2
j. to shingle > 'shingle2 †70
k. to farm > 'farme2 †
The examples in (12a,b) illustrate what happens to most monosyllabic English verbs that are borrowed into Norwegian – they receive default Accent-2 as infinitives if possible. However, as we can see in (12c) one verb 'robbe1 ‘to rob’ initially had Accent 1. Stene (1940) attributes the Accent 1 of robbe and its irregular past tense formation (1936: robbed – today: robba/
robbet) to its foreign-word status. She gives many different reasons for why a loanword does or does not fit well into Norwegian. One of which is whether a word is regarded as being foreign by the speakers of the borrowing language. According to Stene, loans apparently can go through different degrees of being foreign, and of becoming native. Out of the 31 monosyllabic verbs listed in Stene (1940), only 'robbe had Accent 1 at the start, however it also adapted, i.e., it became less foreign, and eventually changed to Accent 2.71 Other loan verbs
69. In this case “today’s Norwegian” refers to the two dictionaries consulted, namely Haugen (1965) and Hustad (1979).
70. The verbs in (12j,k) are now obsolete. The verb in (12j) meant to cut hair in the “shingle” style of the 1920s – perhaps one good reason why it did not endure.
71. A word of caution must be given here, an Accent-1 verb like 'robbe is highly peculiar and we cannot be sure whether its classification as an Accent 1 verbs was not just a mistake. We have no further examples of its kind.
totally failed to become a part of the borrowing language, or with time became obsolete as in (12j) and (12k). Of the twelve disyllabic English verbs that Stene (1940) lists, six received Accent 2 as in (12d) 'centre2 ‘to centre’, (12e) 'chartre2 ‘to charter’ and an additional six verbs with more compound-like structure received Accent 1, e.g. (12f, g). The two verbs consisting of more than two syllables, (12h) and (12i), both had Accent 1 at one time, although (12i) 'ka(p)pseise2 ‘to capsize’ has changed to Accent 2 today. This change in accent might have been analogous to the accentual pattern of other words beginning with kapp, e.g. 'kappgå2 ‘to compete in a walking race’, 'kappdrikke2 ‘to take part in a drinking competition’, 'kappkjøre2
‘to race (cars)’.
All in all, Stene (1940) shows us that monosyllabic verbs tend to adapt very well to the Norwegian system, as do some disyllabic verbs ending in /r/ – all of which have disyllabic infinitives with default Accent 2, as in (12d,e). The remaining few genuinely polysyllabic verbs are lexically specified for Accent 1. One interesting point here is that we have not yet encountered an example of an English loan coming into the system with Accent 2 and changing to Accent 1.
2.1.2. Complex verbs: Middle Low German loans
Now let us go further back in time to the very influential period of the Hanseatic League and focus on how MLG complex verbs made their way into Scandinavian. One interesting aspect of this large influx of MLG loans is that Scandinavian not only borrowed whole words, but they also borrowed numerous prefixes – both verbal and nominal. Most Scandinavian prefixes today are, in fact, either borrowed or modelled on MLG or High German prefixed forms.72
In Chapter 3 we mentioned the large amount of loan words coming into Scandinavian due to the influence of the Hanseatic League. Scandinavian was very receptive at the time to new prefixes. It is difficult to established exactly why ON so willingly welcomed prefixes, but one conjecture is that Proto-Norse syncope was fatal for most prefixes. It especially seems to have taken its toll on verbal prefixes. Here, only a handful survived into ON – all consisting of heavy syllables, and all of which are stressed and take Accent 2 in the modern dialects, as we mentioned in section 1.1, when considering the similarities between Swedish and Norwegian
72. It is often difficult to establish the source language between High German and MLG since the prefixes are so similar.
(Swedish: {'miss-}, {'jäm-}, {'sam-}, {'gen-}; Norwegian: {'mis-}, {'jam-/'jevn-}, {'sam-}, {'gjen-}, cf. also (6)).
We assume that the stress pattern of prefixed words before syncope was basically stress on the prefix for nouns, and stress on the stem for verbs. One reason for making this assumption is that the surviving prefixes either had heavy syllables, as we saw above for verbs, or they were nominal prefixes. An example of a surviving nominal prefix is the prefix {av-} < {af-}. Two of the few remnants of this prefix left today, in both Swedish and Norwegian, are 'avÆgift2 ‘fee’
and 'avÆund2 ‘envy’. We can only attribute their survival to the fact that they must have bore stress – in contrast to most of the verbal prefixes. We, however, did also find one example of an ON prefixed verb, afdœma, which has survived in the Swedish verb 'avÆdöma2 ‘to decide, judge’ and in the Nynorsk verb 'avÆdømme1 ‘to damn’. Note, that this apparently ON prefix has Accent 1 today in Nynorsk. Although this is a native stressed prefix, we believe it has Accent 1 because the majority of today's Swedish and Norwegian {av-} prefixed verbs were actually borrowed from MLG, or modelled on German prefixed verbs, which all have Accent 1 in Norwegian (Wessén 1958: 101), and this native {av-} has apparently joined this group.
However, the number of surviving verbs with native prefixes such as {av-} is minimal. A second reason for assuming that nominal prefixes bore stress, and that the verbal prefixes did not, is because this pattern is still prevalent in many Germanic languages today (cf. Lahri, Riad
& Jacobs 1999).
To sum up our arguments here, we believe that one consequence of Proto-Norse syncope is that it created an imbalance between the stress patterns of prefixed nouns and verbs, which was once in more or less complementary distribution. Nouns predominantly had stressed prefixes, and verbs unstressed prefixes. Another effect was that after syncope had eliminated most unstressed vowels, and with it unstressed prefixes as well, the only prefixed words remaining were for the most part nouns. This void left over from Proto-Norse syncope seems then to have been filled with new prefixed forms from MLG, and later with prefixed forms containing native components modelled on MLG.
To exemplify how early these loans came into Scandinavian we reproduce a list from Wetterlin, Lahiri, & Jönsson-Steiner (2007:354) giving the first dates of occurrence for {be-}
verbs in Swedish and the corresponding verbs in Norwegian for comparison.
(13) First occurrence of {be-} verbs in Swedish
Swedish Gloss 1st occurrence Norwegian
bedröva1 to grieve 1541 bedrøve1
befalla1 to command 1526 befale1
bedåra1 to fascinate 1616 bedåre1
bebåda1 to proclaim 1615 bebude1
bedraga1 (bedra1) to deceive 1525 bedra1
beklaga1 to pity 1526 beklage1
Middle Low German influence on Scandinavian took place from the 13th to 16th centuries.
However, these dates of first occurrence have been taken from the Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB), which only consults texts back to the first half of the 16th century. Nonetheless, we maintain that these loans mark the beginning of Accent-1 infinitive verbs, which can be at least dated back to the beginning of the 16th century.
We have just seen approximately when MLG prefixes came into Scandinavian, and our hypothesis on why Scandinavian borrowed so many prefixes. Before presenting our analysis of how MLG complex words were incorporated into Scandinavian in section 3, we present a general hypothesis of how complex words are borrowed as undecomposed wholes in section 2.2. We then apply this hypothesis to MLG prefixed loans, and see why they affected an influx of new Accent-1 words into Scandinavian.