Middle Low German-Middle Scandinavian language contact and morphological simplification

Abstract

The impact of Low German on the continental Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian) in the days of the Hanseatic League has been a decisive chapter in Scandinavian language history. Not only were a substantial amount of words transferred from Middle Low German into Middle Scandinavian, it has also been argued that Middle Low German influence played an important part in the loss of inflectional morphology (deflexion 1 ) in most varieties of the continental Scandinavian languages, although this aspect remains somewhat underexposed in the extensive literature on language contact between Middle Low German and Middle Scandinavian . The strongest argument in favour of this claim is that the decline of the old native inflectional systems reached its most advanced stage in precisely those areas where Middle Low German impact was at its strongest, whereas more peripheral languages and dialects, such as Icelandic or certain Swedish rural dialects are more conservative. However, it still remains unclear in what way contact with Middle Low German affected Scandinavian morphology. In the present study I will examine some of the hypotheses that have been put forward with regard to the relationship between language contact and morphological simplification. 2 I will approach this problem from two, rather different, angles. First, I will discuss the hypothesis that long term contact between closely related languages (such as Middle Low German and Middle Scandinavian or Old English and Old Norse), which to a degree are mutually intelligible, leads to a rapid neutralisation of inflectional differences. The second viewpoint I will consider concerns the relation between the vast amount of loan-words and morphological simplification (cf. Norde 1994). I will take the Middle Low German influence on Middle Swedish as an example.