17.3551, Diss: Historical Ling/Socioling/Text&Corpus Ling: Morse-Gagne: 'Vik...'

[LINGUIST Network]

LINGUIST List: Vol-17-3551. Fri Dec 01 2006. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 17.3551, Diss: Historical Ling/Socioling/Text&Corpus Ling: Morse-Gagne: 'Vik...'

Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry at linguistlist.org>
 
Reviews: Laura Welcher, Rosetta Project / Long Now Foundation  
         <reviews at linguistlist.org> 

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/

The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, Wayne
State University, and donations from subscribers and publishers.

Editor for this issue: Hannah Morales <hannah at linguistlist.org>
================================================================  

To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at
http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html.


===========================Directory==============================  

1)
Date: 30-Nov-2006
From: Elise Morse-Gagne < morsegag at gmail.com >
Subject: Viking Pronouns in England: Charting the course of THEY, THEIR, and THEM 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2006 13:45:53
From: Elise Morse-Gagne < morsegag at gmail.com >
Subject: Viking Pronouns in England: Charting the course of THEY, THEIR, and THEM 
 


Institution: University of Pennsylvania 
Program: Department of Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2003 

Author: Elise E. Morse-Gagne

Dissertation Title: Viking Pronouns in England: Charting the course of THEY,
THEIR, and THEM 

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics
                     Sociolinguistics
                     Text/Corpus Linguistics

Subject Language(s): English (eng)
                     Middle English (enm)
                     Old English (ang)
                     Old Norse (non)


Dissertation Director(s):
Anthony S. Kroch
James Milroy
Donald A. Ringe

Dissertation Abstract:

THEY, THEIR, and THEM are of Scandinavian origin, having entered English in
the wake of the 9th-century Viking settlements of northern England.  In
spite of having surprised and intrigued linguists for a century this
phenomenon is still poorly understood.  I investigate both its linguistic
and social aspects through four avenues: recent historical research; the
pronoun paradigms used in early medieval Scandinavia and England, as nearly
as these can be ascertained; the dynamics of the dissemination of the
Scandinavian pronouns through Middle English texts; and current findings on
the characteristics and outcomes of different language contact situations.
 The pronouns did not enter English in spite of the nature of the contact
between the English and the Scandinavians, but because of it.  Assumptions
that their relations were necessarily adversarial are not borne out by the
historical evidence.  The paradigms usually given for the Scandinavian
pronouns and the English demonstratives are anachronistic; a closer
approach to those forms permits us both to clarify the changes the pronouns
underwent in the transfer to English, and to discard the idea that THEIR
and/or THEM stem from the English demonstrative.  Claims that the
Scandinavian forms appeared very early in English (surfacing as Old English
 thaege and theora) depend on the belief that written conservatism
disguised writers' spoken usage for centuries.  This is refuted: Middle
English texts, while they must be analyzed with caution, provide much
demonstrably accurate evidence for the pronouns their writers used.  An
alternative analysis of thaege is provided.  Theories that the Scandinavian
pronouns were borrowed in spite of potential disruption to the structure of
English, or that structural similarities between the languages permitted
the loan, are examined and shown to be equally ill-founded.  The data does
not support the hypothesis that English speakers adopted the Scandinavian
pronouns to repair homonymy in the English paradigm.  Models of language
contact and findings on the transfer of closed-class items are presented as
possible routes towards a better understanding of how THEY THEIR THEM came
to be used by monolingual speakers of Middle English. 




-----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-17-3551