Talk:Greenlandic Norse

Is it possible that...

Is it possible that Greenlandish Norse may have gone through a process of /θ/ → /t/ and /ð/ → /θ/? Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 02:25, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

In view of ‹Tortarson› < Þórðarson and ‹hloþu› < hlóðu your suggestion does not quite work. If ‹þ› stands for [ð], which is quite plausible, [ð] may instead have become [t] after consonants (or at least after /r/) too and remained as such after vowels. Or, alternatively, the second ‹t› in ‹Tortarson› may stand for [d], and [ð] may generally have become [d], but either retained or weakened again after vowels to give [ð]. This resembles the situation in Danish. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:48, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Isn't that sort of like what happened in West Germanic languages to Proto-Germanic /ð/? Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 19:44, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Not really; Proto-Germanic /ð/ simply became /d/ in West Germanic, while /θ/ was initially retained (it later became /d/ everywhere but in Anglo-Frisian).

The development /θ/ > /t/ and secondary /ð/ > /d/ (after this secondary /ð/ had developped from /θ/ that was voiced after vowels or in unstressed words such as pronouns) is found in most modern Frisian dialects and certain varieties of English, however. (Note that southwestern English dialects have voiced all initial fricatives; these seem to have all retained them.)

This is essentially the same development we find in most of North Germanic, except that Old Norse /ð/ also has the source Proto-Germanic */ð/ in addition to postvocalically voiced */θ/ as in West Germanic, since in Old Norse, Proto-Germanic */ð/ was preserved as such. In Faroese, however, /ð/ was initially retained and eventually changed into various glides (or, before /r/, /g/) depending on environment (or became completely silent), which perhaps could be interpreted as allophones of a phoneme (archiphoneme? morphophoneme?) /ɰ/, which is the product of the merger of Old Norse /ɣ/ ‹g› and /ð/. In the mainland Scandinavian languages, /ð/ changed to /d/ but was later lost in many environments (especially word-finally after a vowel) in Norwegian and Swedish, and in Danish, weakened to an alveolar approximant but usually preserved afterwards. Hence, Faroese has /θ/ > /t/ but did not turn /ð/ into a stop in the first place (actually, /θ/ > /t/ appears to have been a late development in Faroese, well after 1400, and finalised only by 1600; the change was probably imported through immigrants from Norway), while the apparent preservation in Danish is a result of secondary lenition.

Note that in Faroese, Old Norse /ð/ is lost after /r/, although it is still written (for example in fjørður). Greenlandic Norse, on the other hand, has, by all appearances, preserved it, and has even "hardened" it in this environment. Moreover, /θ/ > /t/ took place in Faroese only after the runic inscription on the Kingittorsuaq Runestone was apparently carved. Curiously, even in mainland Scandinavian, the disappearance of /θ/ was not general prior to the late 14th century (according to Noreen), and the inscription is thought to be older than about 1333. As for ‹hloþu›, I wonder if this might not be an historical spelling for /hlo(ː)du/, but ‹enriþi› and ‹sikuaþs› are spelt with ‹þ› as well. Otherwise it seems that the interdentals were only eliminated word-initially and after consonants (or specifically /r/). But note that if ‹uarda› stands for varða and ‹rydu› for ryðu, /ð/ was not actually preserved if we take these spellings at face value. The (partial?) disappearance of the interdentals in Greenlandic Norse looks awfully early and the dialect would appear to be quite progressive in this respect (because of its isolation?). Its state appears to be unique and cannot be directly compared with any contemporary Norse dialect, although the article says "This linguistic innovation has parallels in West Norwegian in the late medieval period". --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:41, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, well, Faroese had some of that abominable th-fronting as well for many words. The only difference between it and other languages that underwent th-fronting is that Faroese was not completely consistent. It simply changed /ð/ to (as you previously mentioned) various glides, /g/, or disappeared completely depending on environment.

As for Greenlandic Norse, could it not be compared to late Old High German in that respect? Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 14:05, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

What do you mean by th-fronting? And where do you see similarities to Old High German? I can't see any. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:42, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

th-fronting.

I meant in respect to its early shift away from the dental fricatives. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 19:19, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

I know what th-fronting means in English, but what phenomenon exactly are you referring to in Faroese? Examples please.

Well, Upper German got rid of the dental fricative already by 800 or so (apparently by way of /θ/ > /ð/ > /d/), Central German in the 9th, some dialects only in the 10th, and Old Saxon only in the 11th or 12th I think: it is clear that the phenomenon gradually spread north from the Alps to the North Sea and beyond, never quite reaching English and Icelandic. But in OHG and Old Saxon, what we find is simply that the original voiceless dental fricative is eventually replaced by /d/, not a split like in North Germanic or Frisian. There is only a single reflex. In Greenlandic Norse, there is more than a single reflex by all appearances, and the disappearance of the interdentals certainly didn't happen anywhere near as early as in OHG. Keep in mind that Norse settlement in Greenland started only at the end of the 10th century, and it seems unlikely that a distinct dialect arose before about 1100. When Old Icelandic started being written on parchment in the 12th century, the dialect spoken in Greenland was certainly still virtually identical with it. If the dental fricatives started to disappear at this time, it was definitely substantially later than late OHG, let alone the dating of the phenomenon in OHG. Keep in mind that the late 11th century is already conventionally assigned to the early Middle High German period and the language was structurally already quite modern, far more modern than Old Norse. Therefore, I'm surprised you bring up OHG here. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:43, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Móður, glaður, graður, støða, áður, etc.

Fair enough. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 00:16, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

So you mean the development /ð/ > /v/? I suspected that, but wasn't sure. I doubt that this could be described as th-fronting – my understanding is that /v/ is simply an automatic glide here, as it is conditioned by the environment (AðU, AgU), and /g/ develops the same way. I think there are some sporadic occurrences of /θ/ > /h/ in Faroese, but no instance of /θ/ > /f/ that I'm aware of (at least none that is specific to Faroese). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:30, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

That may be the way that it is looked at now, but I'd bet historically that that represents an honest development of /ð/ -> /v/. The shift of /g/ -> /v/ in similar environments, I'd reckon, was pushed forwards by the shift of /ð/ -> /v/. I could be completely wrong, but that's my current hypothesis. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 01:13, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Then why the other reflexes [w], [j], zero and [g]? Changes from /v/ to /j/, zero or /g/ are cross-linguistically uncommon. An alternative hypothesis is that /ð/ simply merged with [ɣ] as in Gaelic, and that (as well as /θ/ > /h/) has a good precedent in Gaelic, which is suspected to have been spoken on the Faroe Islands prior to Norse colonisation. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:28, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

A shift of /v/ to /w/ wouldn't be odd or uncommon, nor would /v/ -> /w/ -> null be out of the question. If I really wanted to claim that th-fronting caused it all, then I could claim that the /w/ shifted further to /ɣ/, which then hardened to /g/ (and/)or (then) shifted to /j/ (or simply became naught) depending on position. However, I'm not going to claim that, as I don't disagree that a simple merger of /ð/ with /ɣ/ occurred historically in Faroese. With that said, it's not impossible that both th-fronting and the merger of /ð/ -> /ɣ/ could have occurred (possibly one was already in the process and was helped along by the other).

Do you have any particular reason to suspect that th-fronting did not at all play a part in the shift of edh's /ð/ to the various glides that edh represents in modern Faroese today? Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 04:08, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

My explanation is more parsimonious, phonetically better motivated, and has a direct parallel in Gaelic, compared to your more complicated th-fronting hypothesis, that's why I prefer mine. Moreover, /θ/ wasn't fronted to /f/ in Faroese (or any other Scandinavian language or dialect I'm aware of, at least not regularly; /ð/ > /v/ is also unparalleled in Scandinavian elsewhere, by the way), and in English dialects with th-fronting, usually voiceless and voiced fricatives behave identically (except that /ð/ doesn't shift to /v/ word-initially, but Faroese doesn't have word-initial /ð/ in the first place). So, your account lacks symmetry, and the expectation of symmetry has support from dialects where th-fronting is actually known to have happened unambiguously. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 07:11, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

By the way, the Vikings had Gaelic-speaking slaves, thus one might suspect that /ð/ > /ɣ/ and /θ/ > /h/ were originally substitutions performed by native speakers of Gaelic who had trouble pronouncing the Old Norse interdentals. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 07:23, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Manuscript Evidence: 1409 Wedding Certificate

The section entitled Manuscript Evidence mentions a wedding certificate written in 1409 at Garðar preserved in an Icelandic manuscript from 1625. I have been trying to communicate with some fellow linguists on Facebook to learn where I could find an online transcription of the wedding certificate. I would like to compare it with the Greenlandic runic inscriptions from Runedata to see how many features the text shares with the later runic inscriptions. Since I have studied only classical classical languages (Greek and Latin), I have not had the opportunity to learn Danish or Swedish to help better find potential source materials on North Germanic languages. This has made it difficult for me to navigate many online databases of Old Norse texts. If one of the editors of this article could post the 1625 transcription of the wedding certificate alongside a normalized version of the text in early thirteenth century old Icelandic orthography, the section could help better illustrate the main differences between Greenlandic Norse and Old Icelandic.Rigognos Molinarios (talk) 04:21, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

You can read the transcript here: [1] Here is my translation:

"I the rev. Eindriði Andrésson, officialis in Greenland, and the rev. Páll Hallvarðsson, acknowledge that we have declared a bond of marriage between Þorsteinn Ólafsson and Sigríður Björnsdóttir in Holy Church for three Sundays, in the audience of many worthy people, both foreign and local. No-one there knew any impediments preventing them from being bound together by God's law. And as proof of this we two have placed our seals on this letter which was made in Garðar on the next Friday after the mass of St. Magnus, when one thousand years and four hundred years and nine years had passed since the birth of our lord, Jesus Christ."

The mass of St. Magnus is on April 16th so the document was written on April 19, 1409. Haukur (talk) 17:36, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Language, or variety of Old Norse

Are there any sources which call Greenlandic Norse a language in its own right? عُثمان (talk) 11:01, 25 June 2024 (UTC)