Another intriguing Facebook post by Nelson Goering (I’ve added itals where appropriate):
Einar Haugen has this to say about the fate of ð/d in later Scandinavian:
“In all Sc except Ic it normally disappeared after vowels, e.g. CSc veþr weather > veðr > NW vær/Sw dial vär… In Da Sw NN DN it was later restored in the spelling of a number of words, and from this developed a spelling pronunciation with d… In its function as a preterite suffix -ð- was often preserved, or even sharpened to -t-, e.g. CSc svaraði > Da svarede/Sw svarade/DN svārte, but NN svara (older svarade).” (The Scandinavian Languages, pp. 266-7, Sect. 11.3.15)
My question is about the last part, the “sharpening”. Is this usually regarded as a phonological development (and if so, are there any parallels from other morphological contexts), or as (like I’ve sort of vaguely been assuming, without having ever given any real thought to it) an analogical generalization from those verbs in which -t- developed regularly (e.g. vakþi/vakti > vakte). I grant that such verbs aren’t all that numerous in the grand scheme of things, but there are a certain number, and if speakers were looking for a more characterized preterite at the time of d-loss, they’d be a ready source.
I’ll copy Nelson’s conclusion: Any thoughts, or pointers to interesting discussions?
Is this for me? Nelson himself is much better placed to answer his own questions, but I own Norsk språkhistorie, and in vol. 1 Mønster, p. 261 I find:
English tl;dr:
Tis is just the first (sub-)class of verbs, the nå-class consisting of verbs with CV infinitives. But the rest seems to follow in rioughly the same manner, just adding more
epicycles of regular change and analogical levelling.That was a lot of punching. There are probably some errors, but the edit window cut me short after I reloaded, so that’ll have to do. But I can’t help mentioning the annoying strike at the bottom. That was meant to strike out the epi before cycles.
Edit: And now it’s back, so I fixed it.
As always, I apologize for the cranky behavior of my software.
Preterites like nådde are a slightly different case, I think. What sparked my interest was Haugen suggesting, if I’ve read him right, that Norse svaraði became <svarte by a process of “sharpening” the (normally lost!) ð to t. This implied not only retention, but alteration, of a sound that “should” have been lost, because of morphological pressure. A pretty remarkable case, if true — but it sounds like not too many people would follow Haugen in this.
Though, I should say, an interesting different case! Thanks for the quotation.
Yes, it’s different, but glancing through the rest of the chapter, it looked like this was the most thorough explanation, and that the rest follows from different forms of analogy. Clearly not the phonological process that Haugen seems to suggest, though. I’ll have a closer look and see what I can make of it. But probably not today.
If there isn’t any other rð > t, it can hardly be a sound change, can it?
I’ll be back later with analogically triple-marked subjunctive forms from my dialect.
“it can hardly be a sound change, can it?”
Not just with r, but yes, that seems rather a sticking point.
Here’s a FB comment by Sverre Stausland:
Looks good to me. Not that I can compete with the top of Sverre Stausland’s head!