"English is a Scandinavian language?"

[alice]

An provocative new viewpoint on linguistic history, or a load of nonsense spouted by someone who doesn't know what he's talking about? You decide...

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4710

[Richard W]

Calling English a 'creole' is hyperbole.

The idea of transitional styles of speaking between English and pre-Old Norse (or whatever the correct name is for the native language of the Danes in England) makes a lot of sense. Vocabulary-based analyses seem to get horribly confused as to whether English is North Germanic or West Germanic. Something similar may have happened with the language of Jutland, which has been claimed as West Germanic assimilated to North Germanic. A modern example is Paraguayan Portuguese, which is reportedly a dialect continuum ranging from River Plate Spanish to Brazilian Portuguese.

Actually, in some respects West Germanic is not very well defined. Apart from West Germanic consonant gemination, it's been argued that West Germanic is just a (former) dialect continuum of NW Germanic dialects that were not North Germanic. What had been real is the continental West Germanic dialect continuum, from which English parted company a long time ago.

[cntrational]

English is a West Germanic language. It shares the traits that define that grouping. It's been influenced by Norse, French, and maybe Brittonic, but it's West Germanic.

[Viktor77]

I either read this paper or another one similar to it, I can't remember who authored the paper. But in any case, it argued about the same thing, that the evolution of English can be seen as OE ->(infl: FR/ON) ME -> Mod. E. or OE + ON ->(infl:FR) ME -> Mod. E. or even the provocative OE, ON ->(infl: OE/FR) -> ME -> Mod. E. In any case I think it's going too far. We most definitely acquired a massive amount of basic vocabulary from ON, and ON definitely influenced OE, changing the word order of senses (I've read that it might be why we don't displace infinitives, or phrasal verbs any further than one syntactic unit, and why we lost the prefix ge- of past participles). The paper I read made an interesting argument that within the Danelaw a creole or pidgin developed which then brought forth Middle English.

I don't want to discredit the creole/pidgin theory, but English in my opinion has and remains a West Germanic language. This is obvious to anyone who learns Dutch or Frisian. ON might've shared a large chunk of the pie that created ME, but I would say it's too far to say half of the pie, and way too far to say the entire thing. Likely the creole/pidgin formed a sizable but not massive chunk (less than 50%) of the influence that created ME, as bit by bit the creolizations began to take hold throughout the entire language.

But I'm no expert in English so who knows.

[zompist]

I don't have access to my books right now, but it's hard to take this "Norse creole" business seriously if you've read Thomason & Kaufman's demolition in Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Close contact does not mean pidginization, the simplifying aspects of English are shared with most Low Germanic languages, and the literary language (that of London) wasn't in the Danelaw anyway.

[Nortaneous]

There are some words that are descended from Old Norse, but there are also some words that are descended from West Saxon and Kentish. Big deal.

Are there regular phonological developments that can be derived regularly from ON but not from Anglian OE? Are there regular phonological developments that can be derived regularly from Anglian OE but not from ON? If ON replaced OE, we'd expect developments that can be explained from ON but not OE; if it didn't, we'd expect developments that can be explained from OE but not ON.

ModE has /aut/ (OE and ON /u:t/) and /wʊlf/ (OE /wulf/, ON /ulf/), and /ovər/ (OE /ofer/, ON /of(r-)/) and /wɚd/ (OE /word/, ON /orθ/). OE and ModE preserve /w/ before /o u/, and ON doesn't. So either ON simplified /wo wu/ to /o u/ after the Danelaw and the innovation didn't spread or ModE can't be descended from ON.

But I don't know when that simplification happened. Are there Proto-Norse innovations/mergers that are absent in ModE?

[Salmoneus]

and the literary language (that of London) wasn't in the Danelaw anyway.

It's true that the literary language wasn't in the Danelaw. However, the literary language was that of Winchester, the capital, not of London. And Middle English developed primarily from Mercian English, which would have been at least partly spoken in the Danelaw.

[Richard W]

... and the literary language (that of London) wasn't in the Danelaw anyway.

(I see I've overlapped Salmoneus - not difficult if one goes off to work while replying!)

The population of early mediaeval London seems to have been maintained by immigration. The language of London seems to have switched a lot following the Norman Conquest - West Saxon, Kentish, and finally East Midlands.

I'm not sure why you think the literary language should be that of London. The universities were in Oxford and Cambridge; the latter was very much in part of the Danelaw.

To clarify what Salmoneus said - Modern English derives from the Middle English of the East Midlands. In Middle English, West Midlands speech seems close to West Saxon, though I don't know how they compare for the Anglian-Saxon divide. It's a mattering of faltering waves, rather than trees.

[Salmoneus]

Good to have someone who knows what they're talking about reassure me I wasn't totally misremembering...

[Valdeut]

English is (still) a West Germanic language, says George Walkden and Kristin Bech in response to Faarlund and Emonds:
https://www.academia.edu/16943599/Engli ... c_language

[Pabappa]

I never realized ,but apparently Low German is descended from Ingvaeonic, Dutch is descended from Istvaeonic, and High German (i.e. standard German) is descended from Irminonic. (Did they all start with I on purpose?) What that means is that apparently Low German is more closely related to English than to standard German, despite its appearance. So English definitely went off in a wild direction somehow. Perhaps its just the isolation that come sfrom living on an island, whereas all the other languages sort of pulled themselves back together over time.

I honestly dont know if High German was the prestige dialect all along and dialects like Kollumerpompsters were just illiterate peasants' languages ... if so they could have been pushed and prodded by German into becoming more German-like then they otherwise wouldve been. But English definitely cahnged the most, gfven that Kollumerpompsters is called a German dialect, despite being more closely relate to English t han German is, and Low German speakers cannot even pretend to speak English.


I agree that its likely that West Germanic is stimply the rump nation left after the N Germanic and E Germanic people left, and has no unity of its own. Eng being N Germanic isnt really that hard to believe for someone otherwise uneducated, when the alternative is saying that northern German dialects are basically English as it would be if not for 1066 and a few other invasions. BUt I'll take y'all's word for it that the majority consensus is still correct. After all, OE was a written language, and so was early Low German, so we can presumably see that the two were very close. " Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law" etc

perh English's strangeness can be explained by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Ger ... ny_problem "the internal diversification of West Germanic in particular is supposed to have been radically non-treelike." i.e. the continental W Germanic langs wouldve been all weird too if they werent in such close proximity to each other that they almost became one big language that only seems unfamiliar at its edges." THat makes sense, but one wonders why that doesnt happen all the time. why not just one romanc language, etc? were dark age and medieval germans more mobile than mostpeople?

[Richard W]

why not just one romanc language, etc? were dark age and medieval germans more mobile than mostpeople?

Yugoslavs.

It's not so long ago (as much as 200 years ago?) that the western Romance languages were a dialect continuum.

Crystal lists 5 European Indo-european dialect continua: West Romance, West Germanic, Scandinavian, North Slavic and South Slavic.

[gmalivuk]

I had a strong feeling of deja vu reading this, which I figured out probably comes from a thread about English as a fusion of French and Anglic: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=42352

(The suggestion is different, but I think I was reminded of that thread by the purposeful ignorance of many important facts about the history of English.)

[Richard W]

English is a West Germanic language. It shares the traits that define that grouping. It's been influenced by Norse, French, and maybe Brittonic, but it's West Germanic.

I had a look at Gray & Atkinson's IE phylogeny, which is derived from innovations in vocabulary. I ought to hunt down the analysis they used for the Norse loanwords in English, but I note that they failed to recover the Ingvaeonic group - no Anglo-Frisian. English was in West Germanic, but as a sister to the rest of the group.

The inspiration for a genetic tree of languages, the phylogeny of living organisms, actually holds warnings. Species leak, so one can have a reticulate tree because of hybridisation. This happens to a small extent for animals, and is rampant in plants. There's no reason this can't happen in languages. I claim it's probably fair to describe English as West Germanic with a dash of Scandinavian, even at the risk of being declared a throwback to Homo neanderthalensis.

[hwhatting]

I had a look at Gray & Atkinson's IE phylogeny, which is derived from innovations in vocabulary. I ought to hunt down the analysis they used for the Norse loanwords in English, but I note that they failed to recover the Ingvaeonic group - no Anglo-Frisian. English was in West Germanic, but as a sister to the rest of the group.

That's probably why one shouldn't look only at vocabulary only when other information (sound changes, morphology) is available. IIRC, Frisian and English share at least some common sound changes. And the Frisian dialects / languages have been under strong Low German, Dutch, and German influence, so there could be a node Frisian-English that doesn't show up in the vocabulary due to the strong influence by different sets of languages on Frisian on one hand and English on the other hand. (Plus there's also the question what vocabulary you use; there are Anglo-Frisian isoglosses like the word for "key" that probably don't show up in Swadesh-based lists.)

[Bryan]

I don't want to discredit the creole/pidgin theory, but English in my opinion has and remains a West Germanic language. This is obvious to anyone who learns Dutch or Frisian. ON might've shared a large chunk of the pie that created ME, but I would say it's too far to say half of the pie, and way too far to say the entire thing. Likely the creole/pidgin formed a sizable but not massive chunk (less than 50%) of the influence that created ME, as bit by bit the creolizations began to take hold throughout the entire language.

I agree with you. BUT... the similarities between English and Swedish are pretty obvious to anyone who's studied it. Including grammatically. For example, Swedish has lost case, too.

[Richard W]

I had a look at Gray & Atkinson's IE phylogeny, which is derived from innovations in vocabulary. I ought to hunt down the analysis they used for the Norse loanwords in English, but I note that they failed to recover the Ingvaeonic group - no Anglo-Frisian. English was in West Germanic, but as a sister to the rest of the group.

That's probably why one shouldn't look only at vocabulary only when other information (sound changes, morphology) is available. IIRC, Frisian and English share at least some common sound changes. And the Frisian dialects / languages have been under strong Low German, Dutch, and German influence, so there could be a node Frisian-English that doesn't show up in the vocabulary due to the strong influence by different sets of languages on Frisian on one hand and English on the other hand. (Plus there's also the question what vocabulary you use; there are Anglo-Frisian isoglosses like the word for "key" that probably don't show up in Swadesh-based lists.)

Sound changes are also treacherous. There are claimed common sound changes between Ingvaeonic and North Germanic, and there are signs of the Second Germanic Consonant Shift developing in Danish and English - and it certainly isn't for reason of contact in English. There's a claimed Ingvaeonic sound shift *y > *i/*e - in England, its absence splits off West Saxon and West Mercian from the rest of the group.

Looking further afield, RUKI might even be a change shared by some related languages, just as East Asian tonogenesis shows signs of being a sound change shared across unrelated languages. The change of voiced stops to voiceless aspirates in Thai and Lao is a local variant of the general loss of voicing contrast (probably initially being replaced by a breathiness contrast on the vowel) , and this local variant is shared not only with some other geographically adjacent Tai languages, but also with an isolated embedded dialect of Mon.

Morphological changes can diffuse through a continuum just as vocabulary does. In English, we have the documented replacement of the 3s ending -<(e)th> by <(e)s>.

[linguoboy]

UT... the similarities between English and Swedish are pretty obvious to anyone who's studied it. Including grammatically. For example, Swedish has lost case, too.

You mean, exactly like all other Germanic languages apart from German (High and Low), Yiddish, and Nordic outliers like Icelandic and Faroese? Not to mention all Brythonic Celtic languages and all Romance languages apart from Rumanian?

[jmcd]

Not to mention that it's a negative characteristic i.e. a lack of something rather than a shared trait. And not a lack of quasi-universal trait either.

[Viktor77]

We can't deny that Old Norse influenced English grammar more than say the Normans did, and that's why you Bryan find lots of similarities with Swedish. After all, I'm sure Old Norse is the reason we no longer send infinitives and participles to the end of our sentences. But that doesn't mean English is closer to Swedish than it is to its closest relative, Dutch (besides Scots or Frisian of course) (all of three of which lost case as well, by the way).

[Richard W]

But that doesn't mean English is closer to Swedish than it is to its closest relative, Dutch (besides Scots or Frisian of course) (all of three of which lost case as well, by the way).

I don't think Scots has lost its possessive case. Or is it that you are just making a misleading statement because in English and Scots the nominal case marker has morphed into a sufixed postposition?

[Travis B.]

English, Scots, and modern-day Swedish all have lost noun case, pronouns aside. And the same thing has happened to the genitive in all three, where pronouns aside it has become a clitic postposition, i.e. not an actual case. (Note the emphasis on modern-day Swedish, as in older, but not that old, Swedish the genitive behaved as an actual case, relics of which are found in relatively recent formal Swedish and some fixed expressions in present-day Swedish.)

[Bryan]

Hi flamers, I'm not saying English is Scandinavian. In fact, I said "I agree" [with Viktor77]. I merely pointed out that it isn't just West Germanic languages which share striking similarities with English -- as Swedish does too.

Weird how a simple, innocent statement of fact gets twisted and turned. It's why I always keep leaving this board lol.

...Bryan ... that doesn't mean English is closer to Swedish than it is to its closest relative, Dutch (besides Scots or Frisian of course) (all of three of which lost case as well, by the way).

I didn't say English is closer to Swedish. I started my response with the words "I agree"... English is West Germanic and even arguing about that is as retarded as arguing about a flat earth or biological evolution.

UT... the similarities between English and Swedish are pretty obvious to anyone who's studied it. Including grammatically. For example, Swedish has lost case, too.

You mean, exactly like all other Germanic languages apart from German (High and Low), Yiddish, and Nordic outliers like Icelandic and Faroese? Not to mention all Brythonic Celtic languages and all Romance languages apart from Rumanian?

Did I say otherwise? I agreed that English is West Germanic. But I added that there are many striking similarities between English and Swedish as well. I gave one example. I could give more, e.g., certain words borrowed from Norse. No biggie. Not sure why you're being snarky.

[Richard W]

English, Scots, and modern-day Swedish all have lost noun case, pronouns aside. And the same thing has happened to the genitive in all three, where pronouns aside it has become a clitic postposition, i.e. not an actual case. (Note the emphasis on modern-day Swedish, as in older, but not that old, Swedish the genitive behaved as an actual case, relics of which are found in relatively recent formal Swedish and some fixed expressions in present-day Swedish.)

Is the group genitive a morphological character? If so, it has problems as a character for tracing linguistic phylogeny. In North Germanic, it is absent from Norwegian and from Swedish with less strong Danish connections. One could call it an Anglo-Danish character, but I doubt it has anything to do with Canute's realm. Instead, it is a parallel, but not inevitable, development of similar systems, perhaps like four-chambered hearts.

The morphology of the English postposition is quite complicated when the preceding word is inflected. In my idiolect, the possessive of the verb form does seems to be does's, while the possessive of the verb form goes seems to be goes', though I'm not sure the latter doesn't end in a geminate consonant phonetically.

[KathTheDragon]

In my idiolect, the possessive of the verb form

How on earth does that work? What do such constructs mean?