Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät - Nordeuropa-Institut – Skandinavistik und Nordeuropa-Studien

Im Rahmen des SFB 1412 „Register“ ist das Birgitta-Notker-Korpus (BiNoKo) erschienen. Das Korpus enthält neben den altschwedischen Offenbarungen der Heiligen Birgitta von Schweden auch den althochdeutschen Psalter Notkers. BiNoKo zielt auf die Untersuchung historischer Register im Althochdeutschen und Altschwedischen ab.

Zenodo

Kooperationsprojekt mit Kristel Van Goethem, Université Louvain-la-Neuve, und Francesca Masini, Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna.

Das Projekt erforscht die Entstehung und den Wandel von Registern in den jeweils frühesten Sprachstufen zweier germanischer Sprachen, Althochdeutsch und Altschwedisch.

Weitere Informationen

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, HU-Zukunftkonzept Bildung durch Wissenschaft – Persönlichkeit, Offenheit, Orientierung: Förderung für Language change: A constructional Approach (50%-Vertretung und Tutorstelle für ein Jahr, Reise- und Aufenthaltskosten). Dieses HU-Programm ist durch die Exzellenzinitiative gefördert (Bundesförderung).

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Förderprogramm Digitale Medien in Lehre und Forschung: project grant for the interactive online database Clusters of Change (research assistant for 2 years and hardware).

Das Buch erschien im Jahre 2009 bei Oxford University Press.

„Grammaticalization is a well-attested process of linguistic change in which a lexical item becomes a function word, which may be further reduced to a clitic or affix. Proponents of the universality of grammaticalization have usually argued that it is unidirectional and have thus found it a useful tool in linguistic reconstruction. In this book Prof Norde shows that change is reversible on all levels: semantic, morphological, syntactic, and phonological. As a consequence, the alleged unidirectionality of grammaticalization is not a reliable reconstructional tool, even if degrammaticalization is a rare phenomenon. Degrammaticalization, she argues, is essentially different from grammaticalization: it usually comprises a single change, examples being shifts from affix to clitic, or from function word to lexical item. And where grammaticalization can be seen as a process, degrammaticalization is often the by-product of other changes. Nevertheless, she shows that it can be described, like grammaticalization, in a principled way, in order to establish whether a change in a word has been from more to less grammatical or vice versa, and the stages by which it has become so. Using data from different languages she constructs a typology of degrammaticalization changes. She explains why degrammaticalization is so rare and why some linguists have such strongly negative feelings about the possibility of its existence. She adds to the understanding of grammaticalization and makes a significant contribution to methods of linguistic reconstruction and the study of language change. She writes clearly, aiming to be understood by advanced undergraduate students as well as appealing to scholars and graduate researchers in historical linguistics.“

Forschungsprojekt, gefördert durch die Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (Postdoktoratsstipendium).

„The main aim of this project was to present a detailed description of the gradual decline of the Continental Scandinavian case system, based on an extensive database of relevant constructions. These fundamental changes were approached from three different angles. First of all, the project addressed the crucial question of whether loss really is the inevitable fate of inflexional material, as predicted by the so-called unidirectionality hypothesis in grammaticalization theory. I found that loss is inevitable eventually, but that there existed an intermediary stage (which has been little studied so far) during which inflexional case marking was reinforced. Secondly, I found that the form of the noun and its modifiers is not only determined by syntactic rules of government, but by the inflexional classes they belong to as well. Thirdly, the inflection of native words was contrasted with the inflection of loan-words.“

Forschungsprojekt, gefördert durch die Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Postdoc-Stipendium).

„This project aimed at refining earlier accounts of deflexion in Swedish, and to provide a coherent analysis of the loss of oblique case inflections and the increasing use of prepositional constructions as a case study in grammaticalization patterns. The primary research questions were the following: 1: How did the decline of case inflections proceed in space and time? 2: Which endings were retained and what function did they acquire? Are these changes in accordance with theoretical claims about the final stages of grammaticalization? 3: What prepositional constructions were used to encode grammatical relations formerly expressed by the oblique cases genitive, dative and accusative? How was the grammaticalization of new prepositions achieved? 4: What is the chronological relation between the loss of oblique cases and the rise of periphrastic prepositional constructions? Does the increasing use of prepositions precede or follow the decline of inflectional case or did both processes occur simultaneously? 5: Are there any grammatical and / or semantic differences between the old and the new construction, in other words, is it legitimate to treat them as equivalents?“

Promotionsstipendium, Universiteit van Amsterdam.

„Degrammaticalization, the shift from a more grammatical to a less grammatical status, appears to be extremely rare. Yet a clear example of degrammaticalization is found in several contemporary Germanic languages, viz the s-genitive. The s-genitive (as in English the queen of England's power), is most suitably analysed as a phrase-final clitic, but unlike other clitics it does not derive from a lexical item, but from an inflectional ending. This study presents a survey of the rise of the s-genitive in one language, namely Swedish. Covering a period of more than 700 years (from the beginning of the Runic Swedish period until the influential 1541 bible translation), it is concerned with both phonological, morphological and syntactic aspects of the Swedish genitive. From the historical data presented in this book, it becomes evident that s, initially only the genitive singular of masculine and neuter (i/j)a-stems, was first re-analysed as a phrase marker before it spread to other declensions. The book also provides a discussion of both internal and external factors that are usually held responsible for the loss of inflectional morphology in the continental Scandinavian languages, as well as a contrastive survey of possessive constructions in Germanic.“