The History of the Reinforced Demonstrative in Nordic

Download or read book The History of the Reinforced Demonstrative in Nordic written by Eric T. Lander and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The task of reconstructing the reinforced demonstrative paradigm for early Nordic has been called “impossible” by the eminent Einar Haugen. In The History of the Reinforced Demonstrative in Nordic, Eric T. Lander aims to accomplish exactly this, by way of an exhaustive study of the pronoun’s attestations in the Viking Age runic inscriptions, which are the earliest forms of this item to be recorded in Scandinavia. The detailed picture of regional variation that emerges is then used to inform reconstructions of the paradigm from Proto-Nordic to Common Nordic. The book represents the first serious attempt in historical-comparative linguistics to grapple with the morphological development of the North-West Germanic reinforced demonstrative since the work of 19th-century scholars like Sophus Bugge.