Hjalmar P. Petersen

Related languages, convergence and replication: Faroese-Danish

The aim of this article is to present examples of a number of types of changes in Faroese that have come about under the influence of Danish. The majority of the residents of the Faroe Islands are bilingual in Faroese (L1) and Danish (L2). This has resulted in many loanwords, convergence and replication. The main topic of this article is convergence and replication, and we subscribe to a definition of convergence that stresses it as a one-way phenomenon, which involves the abstract level structure of a source language, and the surface-level patterns coming from the recipient language.

The have/be alternation in contemporary Faroese

Abstract This paper investigates the status of the alternation in Faroese between have (hava) and be (vera) as auxiliaries combining with the past participle/supine. We present the results of two online questionnaire studies and argue that the data indicate that in Faroese the have/be alternation is an alternation of perfect auxiliaries, like in Danish but unlike the other Scandinavian languages, where be can only be used to convey resultant state.

From genitive to linking element

In contemporary Faroese, the genitive as verbal and prepositional case has been replaced by the dative or the accusative, e.g. biða eftir maer ‘wait for me-DAT’ or biða maer ‘wait me-DAT’ instead of biða min ‘wait mine-GEN’, and frequently also til hann ‘to him-ACC’ instead of til hansara ‘to him-GEN’. Genitive attributes are no longer in use either. In contrast, the system of linking elements in Faroese compounds, originating from the genitive endings, e.g. dag+s+verk ‘days work’ (cf. dag-s ‘day-GEN.SG.’), is subject to continuous development. In this paper, we first discuss the unproductive status of the genitive case. Against the background of the declining genitive, we will then show how the linking elements dissociate functionally and formally from their inflectional (genitive) source. We argue that the contemporary linking system of Faroese comprises different stages of this development. An important stage of dissociation is the (development of) non-paradigmatic linking elements, i.e. linkers which are not homophonic with any inflectional ending of the noun, e.g. + s + in uthurð+s+lykil ‘outdoor-LE1-key’, but uthurð-ar ‘outdoor-GEN.SG.’ The decline of the genitive case has played a decisive role in the recent formal development of the linking system. Our acceptance test with novel and non-sense compounds shows the ongoing formal dissociation of the paradigmatic linker + ar + into non-paradigmatic + a +, where the latter is used more often in front of obstruents. Keywords: historical genitive, linking elements, case loss, compounds, paradigmatic and non-paradigmatic linking elements, syntactic case.