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Language Contact and Development around the North Sea
Editors
This volume brings together eleven studies on the history of language and writing in the North Sea area, with focus on contacts and interchanges through time. Its range spans from the investigation of pre-Germanic place-names to present-day Shetland; the materials studied include glosses, legal and trade documents as well as place names and modern dialects. The volume is unique in its combination of linguistics and place-name studies with literacy studies, which allows for a very dynamic picture of the history of language contact and texts in the North Sea area. Different approaches come together to illuminate a major insight: the omnipresence of multilingualism as a context for language development and a formative characteristic of literacy. Among the contributors are experts on English, Nordic and German language history. The book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students working on the history of Northern European languages, literacy studies and language contact
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 321] 2012. xvi, 235 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 30 March 2012
Published online on 30 March 2012
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
- Preface & Acknowledgments | pp. vii–viii
- Editors’ introduction | pp. ix–xvi
- Part I. The evidence of place-names
- Celts in Scandinavian Scotland and Anglo-Saxon England: Place-names and language contact reconsideredCarole Hough | pp. 1–22
- The colonisation of England by Germanic tribes on the basis of place-namesJürgen Udolph | pp. 23–52
- Ancient toponyms in south-west Norway: Origin and formationInge Særheim | pp. 53–66
- Part II. Code selection in written texts
- On vernacular literacy in late medieval NorwayJan Ragnar Hagland | pp. 67–80
- Four languages, one text type: The neighbours’ books of Bryggen 1529–1936Agnete Nesse | pp. 81–98
- On variation and change in London medieval mixed-language business documentsLaura Wright | pp. 99–116
- Part III. Linguistic developments and contact situations
- Old English–Late British language contact and the English progressiveKristin Killie | pp. 117–140
- The Old English origins of the Northern Subject Rule: Evidence from the Lindisfarne gloss to the Gospels of John and MarkMarcelle Cole | pp. 141–168
- For Heaven’s sake: The Scandinavian contribution to a semantic field in Old and Middle EnglishClaudia DiSciacca | pp. 169–192
- North Sea timber trade terminology in the Early Modern period: The cargo inventory for the White Lamb revisitedMarjorie Lorvik | pp. 193–212
- ‘Nornomania’ in the research on language in the Northern IslesGunnel Melchers | pp. 213–230
- Index of subjects, terms & languages | pp. 231–235
“The volume is a valuable contribution to ongoing research into language contact and multilingualism in northern Europe. Many connections can be drawn between the different articles and sections of the volume. Scholars with special interests in the early Anglo-Saxon period, Celtic contacts, or Scandinavian influences on Northern English and Scots will find much of interest here.”
Stephen Laker, in Journal of English and Germanic Philosophy 112:3 (July 2013)
“Es handelt sich alles in allem gesehen um einen gelungenen und sehr lesenswerten Sammelband mit guten und z.T. auch zukunftsweisenden Beiträgen zum Thema Kommunikation und Schriftlichkeit im mittelalterlichen Nordseeraum.”
Kurt Braunmüller, Institut für Germanistik I, Hamburg, in NOWELE Vol. 67:2 (2014)
Cited by (6)
Cited by six other publications
Zarębski, Rafał
Conde-Silvestre, J. Camilo
Conde-Silvestre, J. Camilo
2022. Historical sociolinguistics. In Handbook of Pragmatics [Handbook of Pragmatics, ], ► pp. 756 ff.
Nevalainen, Terttu
KILLIE, KRISTIN
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