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Phonological Shifting in American Norwegian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Einar Haugen
Einar Haugen*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
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Extract

Problems connected with the borrowing of words from language to language have occupied the attention of many linguists. In most cases this attention has been focused on languages of the remote past, where opportunity for first-hand phonetic observation has been cut off entirely. In the meanwhile borrowing has been going on within the United States on a scale rarely equalled in history, between English on the one hand and all the immigrant languages on the other. Here it becomes possible to record by modern means and to study by modern methods the phonetic form of each word in each of its incarnations, foreign, American, or hybrid. In the following study of one such dialect the writer wishes to present a concrete instance of the possibilities inherent in this kind of research.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 14 , Issue 2-Part1: April-June , June 1938 , pp. 112 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © 1938 Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 Previous to the summer of 1937, when my informant visited Norway.

2 Amund Larsen, Lydlæren i den solørske Dialekt især i den Forhold til Old-sproget. Vid.-Selsk. Skr. II, Hist-filos. Kl., 1894. No. 4.18 (Kristiania, 1894).

3 Words ending in ‘thick’ l acquire retroflex r instead when a dental (l, n, t, d) follows.

4 According to the previously cited work by Amund Larsen (a native of the district and an eminent linguist) l becomes cacuminal in the following situations: intervocalic or final, when it is short and follows some other vowel than i, i:, and ei (121-2); before labial and velar consonants (98, 102); before dentals without following consonant (122); after y before j (123); after labial and velar consonants (104, 106). In all positions exceptions may occur in the case of late loan words: smal a., sal m., silke m., salme m., klær a., klφver m., stφvvel m.

5 In pronouncing [Ṙ] and [ḷ] the tongue elevation is almost identical with that of American [r] (retroflex tongue-point and tongue-blade semivowel); cf. Kenyon, American Pronunciation6 44, and Larsen 14 and 18. From personal observation I should say that Norwegian [Ṙ] is tenser than American [r], with more lateral contraction and a larger resonance chamber. The [ḷ] is distinguished from [Ṙ] solely by a slap of the tongue point on the alveolar ridge at the moment of release; as there is no slap before a following dental, the two are not distinguished in this position even in the original dialect. In my informant's speech the slap is entirely lacking, so that his [Ṙ] and [ḷ] are indistinguishable. Several of his transcriptions show confusion of these sounds.

6 A comparison of the descriptions in Larsen 12-13, and Kenyon 66, indicate that the American sounds are respectively high, mid, and low back rounded, while the Solør sounds are high central, high back, and low back rounded. This leaves the mid back position unoccupied, where American [o] is imported.