GLAC 22 2016 22nd Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference University of Iceland May 20–22, 2016 Abstracts and Directory of Presenters [May 13, 2016] Organizing committee Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson University of Iceland ([email protected]) Haraldur Bernharðsson University of Iceland ([email protected]) Margrét Guðmundsdóttir University of Iceland ([email protected]) Tonya Kim Dewey University of Minnesota Morris ([email protected]) Þórhallur Eyþórsson University of Iceland ([email protected]) Conference service provided by CP Reykjavík. We are grateful for the generous support from the following sponsors: University of Iceland office of the President The University of Iceland Linguistics Institute The Centre for Research in the Humanities, University of Iceland Chargée d’Affaires of the Federal Republic of Germany Ms Diane Röhrig Society for Germanic Linguistics John Benjamins Publishing Company Cambridge University Press Brill Publishers http://glac2016.hi.is [email protected] #glac22 Note: In keeping with Icelandic convention, the abstracts are alphabetized by the presenter’s first name. 2 Abstracts of Plenaries 3 4 There is no “Icelandic A and B” nor “Faroese 1 and 2” Höskuldur Þráinsson University of Iceland The so-called Principles and Parameters approach to linguistic variation (cf. Chomsky 1981) has had a very important and positive impact on linguistic thinking about how languages can and cannot vary. But it has also led to a common but unwarranted assumption about linguis- tic variation, which can be described as follows: If Speaker A finds Sentence X acceptable but Speaker B does not, then Speaker A speaks the A-variant of the relevant language and Speak- er B speaks the B-variant and these are discrete and clearly distinct variants. Thus it has sometimes been maintained that Icelandic A and B are distinct syntactic dialects of Icelandic (see e.g. Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson 1996, Gärtner 2003) and Faroese 1 and 2 are separate dia- lects of Faroese (see e.g. Jonas 1996, Bobaljik and Höskuldur Thráinsson 1998). But recent research on language variation suggests that this is not a typical situation. Intra-speaker varia- tion is much more prevalent in language than often assumed and in that sense suggested “dia- lects” blend into each other. In this talk I will first demonstrate this by presenting data from research on variation in Icelandic and Faroese syntax. Then I will show that similar intra- speaker variation is also found in phonological “dialect” features in Ielandic, often independ- ent of linguistic situation or style of speech. Finally, I will comment on the relevance of these facts for the way we think of language acquisition and knowledge, referring in particular to ideas proposed by Yang (2002). References Bobaljik, Jonathan D., and Höskuldur Thráinsson. 1998. Two Heads Arenʼt always Better than One. Syntax 1:37‒71. Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Foris, Dordrecht. Gärtner, Hans-Martin. 2003. How Icelandic Can You Be if You Speak Icelandic B? In Lars-Olof Delsing, Cecilia Falk, Gunlög Josefsson and Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson (eds): Grammar in Focus. Festschrift for Christer Platzack 18 November 2003, vol. II, pp. 115–122. Department of Scandinavian Languages, Lund University, Lund. Jonas, Dianne. 1996b. Clause Structure and Verb Syntax in Scandinavian and English. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson. 1996. Clausal Achitecture and Case in Icelandic. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst. Yang, Charles D. 2002. Knowledge and Learning in Natural Language. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 5 Internal and external effects in the linguistic history of Scandinavia: a view from Iceland Kristján Árnason University of Iceland Haugen (1970) defines three problems in Scandinavian language history: the problem of the be- ginnings, the problem of the dialects, and the problem of the languages. The problem of dialects refers to inherent development with a set of characteristics, some of which arise in “Inner Scandi- navia”, and are “rejected by the outer parts”. A case in point is the tonal distinction, lacking in the west and east. But recent metrical investigations suggest that some such distinction may have survived in Iceland down to the 16thc (Haukur Þorgeirsson 2013). And there are obvi- ously some West Nordic innovations, which do not gain ground in the east, cf. a list of fea- tures common to West-Norwegian, Faroese and Icelandic. The “problem of beginnings” and the “problem of languages” are of a different sort, in fact socio-historical, as much as linguistic. They define a split from a common ancestral “language” or norm into seven modern “languages”, each with its own standard, and as the case may be, dialects. These norms have a clear effect on the development of morphology and syntax, and the central problem is how these norms arise. Where do “Old Norse”, “Dan- ish”, “Swedish” etc. come from? The initiating factor in the “Disintegration of the Danish Tongue” (Karker 1977) was the decision by the Danish authorities to commission Saxo Grammaticus to write the history of the Danes in Latin. And then came the Hansa … Referring to Labov’s distinction between internal and external effects in linguistic change, and borrowing some insights from socio-historical linguistics (e.g. Auer 2005, Kloss 1952), I will be looking at the scene from the North-West, using as a starting point some pho- nological changes occurring in Icelandic and Faroese and parts of Norwegian (Kristján Ár- nason 2011). References Auer, Peter. 2005. Europe’s Sociolinguistic Unity, or: A Typology of European Dialect / Standard Constellations. Nicole Delbecque, Johan van der Auwera & Dirk Geeraerts (eds.): Perspectives on Variation (Trends in Linguistics 163), pp. 7-42. Berlin: De Gruyter. Haugen, Einar. 1970. The Language History of Scandinavia: A Profile of Problems. In Hreinn Benediktsson (ed.). The Nordic Languages and Modern Linguistics. Proceedings of the International Conference of Nordic and General Linguistics, University of Iceland, July 6-11, 1969. Reykjavík: Vísindafélag Íslendinga. Pp. 41-86 Haukur Þorgeirsson. 2013. Hljóðkerfi og bragkerfi. Stoðhljóð, tónkvæði og önnur úrlausnarefni í íslenskri bragsögu ásamt útgáfu á Rímum af Olmari Fraðmarssyni. Reykjavík: Hugvísindastofnun. Karker, Allan. 1977. The disintegration of the Danish tongue. Sjötíu ritgerðir helgaðar Jakobi Benediktssyni 20. júlí 1977. Reykjavík. Stofnun Árna Magnússonar. Kloss, Heinz. 1952. Die Entwicklung neuer germanischer Kultursprachen von 1800 bis 1950. Pohl, München. Kristján Árnason. 2011. The Phonology of Icelandic and Faroese. Oxford: Oxford university Press. Labov, William. 1994. Principles of Linguistic Change. Volume 1: Internal Factors. Oxford: Blackwell. Labov, William. 2001. Principles of Linguistic Change. Volume 2: Social Factors. Oxford: Blackwell. 6 Abstracts of Papers 7 8 The Icelandic Quantity Shift and Monosyllabic Lengthening Aðalsteinn Hákonarson University of Iceland The Icelandic quantity shift (QS) refers to a group of sound changes affecting vowel length (1). (1) a. V > Vː in open syllables, e.g. tala > taːla b. V > Vː in monosyllabic words ending in a single C, e.g. her > heːr c. Vː > V in closed syllables, e.g. bóːndi > bóndi Evidence from poetry has been taken to suggest that the QS took place mainly in the 16th century (Þórólfsson 1929a, Árnason 1980): In poems from that time, original light syllables (open syllables with short vowels) come to occupy strong rhythmic positions from which they were previously barred. Presumably, the syllables had become heavy as a result of change (1a). However, the rhythmic organization of common Icelandic meters only provides direct evidence for changes in vowel length that affect syllabic quantity, cf. (1a). The vowels affected by (1b–c) occupied heavy syllables before as well as after the QS. Hence, the traditional da- ting of the Icelandic QS is based on evidence which only bears directly on (1a). In this paper it will be argued that certain innovations in rhyme, which first appear in poetry from the late 14th century, are most straightforwardly interpreted as evidence for the changes in (1b) and (1c). Previously, the rhymes in question, é : e and vá : o, have been inter- preted as evidence that poets no longer objected to rhyming long and short vowels if their quality was sufficiently similar (Þórólfsson 1929b, Benediktsson 1979). Our reinterpretation suggests that short vowels followed by a single consonant length- ened earlier in monosyllables (1b) than in polysyllabic words (1a). This is not entirely surpris- ing for the same sequence of events is commonly assumed in the case of parallel changes in Swedish and Norwegian (e.g. Riad 1992) and in many High-German dialects (e.g. Naiditsch & Kusmenko 1992 and Seiler 2009). The evidence for the Icelandic QS is, however, different in nature from that cited in relation to the other languages. It casts light on a feature of the development of length in monosyllables (1b) that remains unclear for the other languages and may help explain why the chronological pattern where change (1b) precedes (1a), observed in many instances of the Germanic QS, is so common (although not universal). References Árnason, Kristján. 1980. Quantity in historical phonology: Icelandic and related cases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Benediktsson, Hreinn. 1979. Relational Sound Change: vá > vo in Icelandic. In Irmengard Rauch and Gerald F. Carr (eds.): Linguistic Method. Esseys in Honor of Herbert Penzl, 307–26.