Word formation of the weak verbs of Old West Norse

• Applicant: Dr. Ramón Boldt
• Subject Area: Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics ; General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 538052277

For a long time, Old West Norse–the earliest literarily attested stage of the North Germanic languages Norwegian, Icelandic and Faeroese–has been of great interest to historical linguistics. Nevertheless, relatively little has been known about its system of weak verbs. Weak verbs are characterized above all by the fact that they form their preterite with a dental element, in German with -t- (machen : machte), in Old West Norse with -t-, -d-, or -delta-, depending on the phonetic environment. In addition, they are usually derived from nouns or strong verbs. In contrast to modern German, for example, the weak verbs of Old West Norse are divided into three classes according to their stem-forming suffix: the jan-, the ôn-, and the ên-class. The nan-verbs of a former distinct fourth class, attested as such only in the earlier East Germanic Gothic, joined class 2, that is, they show the same inflection. This division in formal classes seems to be accompanied by differences in meaning which have not been sufficiently studied so far. The weak verbs of modern German, e.g., all end in -en, all classes formerly separated here as well have merged. This is associated with a great semantic richness, which becomes clear when paraphrasing the meaning of weak verbs, cf. for example filmen 'to make a film', fischen 'to catch fish', ölen 'to provide with oil'. From studies on other Old Germanic languages and some (especially older) works on Old West Norse we know that class 1, i.e. the jan-verbs, contains mainly so-called causatives or factitives, i.e. verbs that denote a bringing about or causing of what is mentioned in their derivational base. A prime example is setja 'to set', derived from strong verb sitja 'to sit'. It thus denotes the bringing about of sitting, 'making sit'. While this class is comparatively well studied and understood, this is not true for the other classes. In this, Old West Norse differs from the other Old Germanic languages. This deficit is to be made up in the proposed project by means of a detailed and systematic corpus study. This would not only make accessible an important area of Old West Norse synchronic grammar, but the results will also help understand the diachronic development from Proto-Germanic - the common ancestor of all Germanic languages - and its system of weak verbs.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants