LL-L "Pronouns" 2002.02.25 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: "Jan Strunk" <strunk at linguistics.ruhr-uni-bochum.de>
Subject: LL-L "Pronouns" 2002.02.24 (08) [E]

Dear Lowlanders,

Ron wrote:
> So am I right when I hear you say you assume the North Germanic and West
> Germanic developments to be independent from each other?  Or do you
> think this could also be a case of spread (northward or southward),
> considering that the same type of neuter pronoun replacement in West
> Germanic is strongest in *North* Saxon (not so much or not all all on
> Westphalian and Eastphalian and in the southern dialects of North
> Saxon)?  Of course, North Saxon borders on Southern Jutish and Danish.

That's a good question. It could very well be that the use of "dat"
instead
of "et/it" in North
Saxon is due to Scandinavian influence. How is the case in Dutch and
Frisian?
Is there perhaps a form like "et" in Sonderjysk?
Yesterday I looked through some rather old books on Germanic, Gothic and
the
Scandinvian languages,
but there was never a comment on why the Scandinavian languages have
"det",
etc. instead of the
"normal" neuter pronoun.
If a find the time, I will look further.

Regards,

Jan Strunk
strunk at linguistics.ruhr-uni-bochum.de

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From: Ted Harding <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
Subject: LL-L [It/That]"Pronouns" 2002.02.24 (08) [E]

> From: "Jan Strunk" <strunk at linguistics.ruhr-uni-bochum.de>
> Subject: LL-L "Pronouns" 2002.02.24 (04) [E]
>
> Dear Lowlanders,
>
> Ron wrote in reply to Wim:
>> > The same applies for Swedish:
>>
>> >  Det är kalt idag. It is cold today.
>>
>> This is because the Scandinavian languages, like many dialects of Low
>> Saxon (Low German), use the same word for the neuter ("common gender"
>> in Scandinavian terminology) 'it', 'that' and 'the', where this
>> _det_ is used impersonally.  I do not think that this is due to Low
>> Saxon influence, because I believe this is the case also in Modern
>> and Old Icelandic (_það_).
>
> All the Scandinavian languages seem to have replaced the original
> personal pronoun paradigm for the 3. Sg. Neuter with the
> demonstrative paradigm. Otherwise, the 3. Sg. Neuter Nominative
> would probably be something like * et (?) (as Gothic ita).
> Does anyone know why this replacement occured?
> That would also be relevant to the Lowlandic languages as this change
> has taken or is taking place in some languages like Northern Low Saxon.
[...]
> Dutch, High German and Low Saxon het, es, et/it respectively are
> well on their way to become or already are clitics, i.e. they are
> phonologically reduced to 't and have a special syntactic and semantic
> behaviour.
> Something like this could obviously also have happened in the
> Scandinavian languages.

Well, this gets interesting! My original query concerned a dialect
of East Anglia. Over a thousand years ago there was, of course,
a very strong Danish influence in that region (King Alfred
tried to do something about that ... ). However, if "it->that"
were a residue of those times, this would imply that it already
existed 1000-1500 years ago in Old Norse (or whatever prcisely
the Vikings and Danes then spoke). From the above, it seems that
the shift might not have taken place so long ago.

On the other hand (and this was in the back of my mind when
posting the query), much more recently (1600 onwards) there
was a substantial immigration of North French, Flemish and
Dutch (including Friesian) people to East Anglia -- initially
mainly as religious refugees, but later (especially Dutch-related)
when Vermuyden was brought in to undertake to work of draining
the Fens. Many of the earthmovers were from existing immigrants,
others came across later for the work. Of course, many of these
stayed on, and it may be expected that their speech left its
traces in local speech of today (as one can hear, for instance,
in the pronunciation of "house" like the Dutch "huis").
So, if there were an "it->that" tendency in those more recently
imported speech forms, it might be a more plausible explanation
than going back to King Alfred's times.

As opposed to Danish influence in East Anglia, there was
a general Viking influence over the whole of Eastern Britain
right up to the North coast of Scotland (very perceptible
on the West as well, of course, but particularly strong
in the East and especially the North-East), including
Yorkshire and Northumberland/Durham.

Now, I'm not particularly knowledgeable about Northumberland/
Durham dialect ("Geordie" for the Newcastle area), but I have
not encountered "it->that" otherwise in that region. So,
for what that evidence is worth, it becomes less likely
that it's a residue from Viking days. About all I do know
of that dialect is that it is better understood by people
from Friesland than by people from anywhere else in England.

So, in particular, it would be interesting if anyone who
knows the Northumberland/Durham speech well could say
whether "it->that" also occurs there. For reference,
I repeat the examples I gave in the first place:

Meeting someone in the local village street today:--
   "Wintry today!" said I.
   "That certainly is" said he.

Or:--
   "I called my dog into the house and that just sat
    there. That took no notice of me at all."

Best wishes to all,
Ted.

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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
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Date: 25-Feb-02                                       Time: 11:08:02
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