Is the definite article in Jutlandic a borrowing from Low German?

Abstract

One of the most conspicuous features of the Scandinavian languages is that definiteness with bare nouns is expressed by means of a suffix, e.g., hus-et 'house DEF, the house'. Since the Danish dialects of South and West Jutland, like the other Germanic languages, use a prepositive article, it has often been suggested that this article, viz. œ, e.g., œ hus 'the house', is a borrowing from neighbouring Low German. This suggestion has to be rejected on the following two grounds: 1. Like the Scandinavian languages, but unlike the other Germanic languages, the Jutlandic dialects make a distinction between definiteness with bare nouns and definiteness in other cases. The systems of definiteness in these dialects and in Standard Danish are in fact almost identical, the only difference being that the dialects have a prefix where the standard language has a suffix. 2. Definiteness became part of the grammar of the Scandinavian languages several centuries before the Low Germans started to play a significant role in Scandinavia. The reason, then, why the Jutlandic dialects developed a prefix instead of a suffix of definiteness is probably that a major change in word order had taken place before marking of definiteness became obligatory: attributes were placed before, instead of after, the noun they qualified. In the other Scandinavian dialects the order of events was the other way round.