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Stefan Knoob wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:Law15-F40PuqPA1PWDD00005b1c@hotmail.com">
German has "Wiedergänger", although that is quite archaic, I seem to <br>
remember it from 19th century novels. Don't know about the Danish, but in
<br>
German it does not simply mean "ghost" but that specific kind of ghost of
a <br>
lost soul that comes to haunt the living. <br>
I don't know how old and widespread it is, but it seems to me that the whole
<br>
concept is found in discourses about the supernatural across European <br>
cultures, and was probably in fashion during the Romantic period's <br>
preoccupation with the spooky.</blockquote>
Well, ODS (Ordbog over det danske sprog), the authoritative Danish historical
dictionary, claims that <i>genganger</i> is Early Modern Danish (ældre nydansk,
1500-1700), and the first item attested in the dictionary is from Holberg's
Peder Paars (1719-20). Certainly pre-romanticism!<br>
The Grimms' Wörterbuch (for German) is not quite as clear on this point here,
but all of the examples attested in it (both for <i>Wi(e)dergänger</i> and
the verb <i>wi(e)dergehen</i>) are from C19 or even later. They also seem
to point towards Northern dialects (also <i>wäärgan</i>, <i>wergân</i>: East
Frisian forms of <i>wi(e)dergehen</i>).<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:Law15-F40PuqPA1PWDD00005b1c@hotmail.com">
Would be interesting where it actually comes <br>
from: although a spread from French literature to Danish/German seems <br>
certainly more likely than the other way round, given the literature <br>
dissemination patterns throughout the early modern period, it might actually
<br>
originate in another European language. <br>
</blockquote>
<br>
The assumption that spread always goes from bigger to smaller languages has
a certain plausibility, since bilingualism often is more widespread among
speakers of smaller languages, so they read/hear more of big languages than
vice versa.. But it also works the other way round: since speakers of smaller
languages use bigger languages actively (write/speak) more often than vice
versa, they have more of a chance to influence the bigger languages. (That
this second route of spread often is neglected, is probably a sort of secondary
effect of Chomskyan nativespeakerism: production by nonnatives is assumed
to be faulty and stigmatized by definition, hence negligeable as a source
of language spread.)<br>
<br>
And of course, it is all not just quantitative, cf. my non-quantitative definition
of 'small language' as 'language rarely or practically never used as a <i>
lingua franca</i>'.<br>
<br>
Hartmut Haberland<br>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:Law15-F40PuqPA1PWDD00005b1c@hotmail.com"><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:Law15-F40PuqPA1PWDD00005b1c@hotmail.com">
<blockquote type="cite">From: Paul J Hopper <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:ph1u@ANDREW.CMU.EDU"><ph1u@ANDREW.CMU.EDU></a>
<br>
Reply-To: Paul J Hopper <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:ph1u@ANDREW.CMU.EDU"><ph1u@ANDREW.CMU.EDU></a> <br>
To: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:LINGTYP@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG">LINGTYP@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG</a> <br>
Subject: Re: re- [Danish] <br>
Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 11:47:15 -0400 <br>
<br>
I've often wondered if the "ghost" meaning of Danish genganger is a calque
<br>
on the French revenant. Just curious. <br>
<br>
Paul <br>
<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
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</blockquote>
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