The third volume in the Olomouc Modern Language Monograph series proposes that Modern English (ModE), as a descendent of Middle English (ME), does not derive from Old English (OE), but rather should be classified as a Scandinavian language, which the authors term Anglicized Norse. Their argument rests on a number of specific syntactic and morphosyntactic features shared by ModE and ME, on the one hand, and Old Norse (ON) or Modern Scandinavian, on the other. The monograph consists of eight chapters, one introductory chapter, and a short concluding summary with an appendix.

An introductory chapter sets up the basis for the remainder of the book. In establishing working definitions for “English”, the authors define characteristic features of Germanic, namely: definite determiners with initial nonlabial obstruents, at most four distinct productive cases on nouns, prenominal adjectival agreement, comparatives in -r and superlatives in -st, a differentiated set of reflexives, right-headed noun-noun compounding, main clauses with verb-second position, and a synthetic past tense formed with a dental stop (pp. 19–20).

Narrowing their focus, the authors then define English. Given the monograph's argument, the authors need to allow for a definition able to include ON as English's progenitor. Thus, they prefer to say that “a language is a dialect of English if it is a Germanic language spoken natively by a community well settled in England” (p. 22). From there the authors work chronologically backwards from ModE to ME, highlighting the preponderance of similarities over differences between the two as well as the mostly sociolinguistic features distinguishing them (pp. 23–25). In contrast to the closeness seen between ME and ModE, Emonds and Faarlund present reasons why one would see the differences between OE and ME as far greater. Four features which figure prominently are the lapse seen in the written English record, the significant loss of OE vocabulary, delayed and “massive” borrowing from Scandinavian, and a pattern of changes found in English's morphosyntax (pp. 26–28).

Chapter 1 concerns sociolinguistic aspects of the topic in question. After discussing the London variety of the East Midlands dialect of ME as the progenitor of ModE (pp. 31–34), the authors turn to the historical and social dimensions of post-Conquest England and the Danelaw, as well as of the periods immediately preceding (pp. 34–37). Sections 1.3 and 1.4 deal with the Germanic languages of 11th-century England, as well as the cultural aspects reflected in the language which might motivate borrowing from one group by the other. Here the authors introduce their hypothesis that the relative similarity of OE and the ON of the Danelaw, combined with the common subjugation beneath the Norman conquerors, led to a fusion of speech communities (pp. 41–46).

Examination of structural features proper begins in chapter 2, which focuses on lexical elements. The purpose of this chapter is two-fold. First, the authors seek to establish that there is a large-scale presence in English of open-class lexical items drawn from ON. Second, as fits the main argument of the book, the authors argue that open-class lexicon is unable to determine a language's genetic affiliation, and that preference should be given to the language's grammar. Emonds and Faarlund present the ME lexicon as an amalgam of OE and ON. They argue that in the many cases where ME lexical items have both OE and ON cognates, the assumption that OE was the donor language is unwarranted (pp. 53–54). Chapter 2 concludes with two key statements. First, the authors challenge the traditional view that English speakers adopted one sixth of their vocabulary from the Norse. They propose instead that Norse speakers could have adopted approximately one third of their vocabulary from the English speakers who surrounded them. Second—and perhaps more controversially—“a language's genealogy is properly determined by its grammar, including its morphosyntactic system, and patterns of regular sound change” (p. 57).

The lengthiest chapter of the book is chapter 3. It contains the bulk of the work's evidence that ME possesses syntactic features absent in OE, but present in Norse. Relevant features discussed in this chapter are the preference of VO word order in ME, preference of postverbal particles over prefixed verbs, subject-to-subject raising, subject-to-object raising, periphrastic auxiliary verbs, infinitival clauses as predicate attributes, stranded prepositions, and the behavior of prepositions in sluicing. For each phenomenon in question the authors present examples from either ME or ModE and corroborating examples from ON or a modern Scandinavian language. Counterexamples are also drawn from German or Dutch, as representatives of West Germanic (WGmc) morphosyntax.

Chapter 4 is given over to one morphosyntactic feature, namely, the split infinitive, and its marker in English, to. After a brief overview of the infinitive in Germanic, including Gothic, the chapter examines the syntactic behavior of infinitive phrases in Scandinavian. The authors argue that the infinitive marker is a complementizer rather than a prefix or proclitic. Evidence for this analysis is brought forth from ON orthographic practice, coordination, competition with other complemen-tizers, and split infinitive constructions in ON (pp. 100–102). Split infinitives in mainland Scandinavian are then compared to similar constructions in ME. The authors point to this similarity and the dissimilarity with OE and WGmc constructions as evidence of the ON origins of ME.

Additional morphosyntactic features are examined in chapter 5. This chapter addresses the features present in OE but absent in ME and ON. The phenomena presented are the OE “verb third” construction (pp. 108–110), the absence of case-marked relative pronouns in ME as found in OE (pp. 111–113), subjunctive markers of indirect discourse, loss of reflexive constructions, and loss of correlative adverbs (pp. 113–116). Correspondingly, chapter 6 follows with an examination of morphosyntactic features shared by English and (mainland) Scandinavian. Noted here are the use of the genitive suffix on a phrasal host, case leveling with default objective pronoun usage, the analytic formation of comparative and superlative using “more” and “most” combined with lengthier adjectives, parasitic gaps, tag questions, loss of case morphology, and the optional use of analytic indirect objects.

Points in which Scandinavian and English differ are also addressed, namely, the absence of the Scandinavian -sk/-st reflexive/passive conjugation and the lack of a suffixival definite article. The authors discuss the former in chapter 5, with respect to the changes in expressing reflexives, which the authors see as a minor loss. The latter is also treated as minor, since Scandinavian also allows for nonsuffixed definite articles to precede the nouns they modify (pp. 131–132).

The book returns to the topic of lexicon again in chapter 7, although in contrast to chapter 2, this chapter examines closed class grammatical items. In classifying grammatical verbs, for example, the authors divvy up items into three groups: verbs with OE and ON cognates, verbs with ON sources, and verbs with OE sources (p. 138). Given the special properties of these grammatical verbs, the authors see particular importance in the dual heritage of these items.Footnote ¹ The fact that these grammatical verbs are important in ModE indicates their earlier sociolinguistic import, that “in the face of the hostile French-speaking Norman overlords and their military, common people wanted/needed to talk alike rather than differently” (p. 139). Additionally, chapter 7 accounts for the surviving modal auxiliaries in terms of preference for verbs found in both OE and ON over those found only in OE (such as þurfan ‘need’, p. 140). Similar patterns of retention are argued for in case of demonstratives, quantifiers, prepositions, complex subordinators, and adverbs (pp. 142–147). Emonds and Faarlund see the significant Norse component amongst grammatical morphemes as a sign that syntax should weigh in heavily in determining the origins of English (p. 147).

The final major chapter addresses inflection, including the lack thereof in ME and ModE. The authors suggest that it is difficult to separate inflectional loss in English specifically from the general loss of inflection throughout northern and western European languages (pp. 149–150). The important losses in ON and OE are case markers in nouns and their modifiers, present tense verb markers except for 3rd person singular forms, subjunctive verb forms, dual pronouns, reflexives, and suffixed definite articles on nouns. A short listing of these items is followed by lengthier discussion of the loss of nominal and adjectival case inflection, subjunctive, and loss of Scandinavian inflections. In general, the authors take the position that language contact and general loss of inflection in Europe are the main causes of inflectional loss in English.

Emonds and Faarlund conclude their monograph with a short chapter that summarizes their arguments throughout the book. In particular, ME is “Anglicized Norse”. Furthermore, the morphosyntactic features shared by ME and ModE with Scandinavian suggest that English is an underlyingly and genealogically North Germanic language (and not a WGmc descendant of OE, as held by the traditional view). Finally, the social and historical situation of Danish rule in England prior to the Conquest should make one rethink the interrelationship between Danes and the English (pp. 154–156).

The arguments presented by Emonds and Faarlund will likely polarize readers. Whether one agrees with this hypothesis or not, the field will benefit from the questions raised and argued over. A few words of criticism, however, appear necessary. These fall into two main categories: one factual, the other methodological. Both, however, address the authors' lack of familiarity with historical linguistics and the history of English. Some factual errors are minor. For example, the statement that Hittite is the sole member of a subfamily in Indo-European (p. 17) does not take account of Lydian, Luwian, or Palaic as other members of the Anatolian branch.

Other errors are more germane, such as the discussion of phonological features in the appendix. In one instance, the authors claim that child and kid represent etymological doublets of the same source, the former from OE, the latter from ON. The two, however, are not demonstrably cognate. In the same section, kind and king are put forward as examples of forms with nonpalatalized velars (p. 158). The authors seem to be unaware of the phonological conditions for palatalization in OE. As ModE kind and king come from OE cynd and cyning, respectively, the preservation of the velar is normal when it is adjacent to a front, rounded vowel fronted by i-umlaut.

In other instances, the errors are even more striking. Regarding grammatical lexemes (section 7.2.1), one item is listed as ON in origin (ModE are, p. 138), despite having clear OE cognates (Anglian OE eart ‘are (be.pres.2sg)’, earþ ‘are (be.pres.2sg)’, arun ‘are (be.pres.3pl)’; see Ringe 2006:154). Also in this list, ModE make is listed as having both OE and ON etyma, though the situation is a little cloudier: ON maka seems to only be present in the ON corpus as a foreign term (see Cleasby & Vigfusson 1874:408). Similarly, in the discussion of complex subordinators in section 7.2.5, the absence of subordinators in German such as für dass ‘for that’, ohne dass ‘without that’, in dass ‘in that’, and ehe dass ‘before that’ is presented as evidence that this feature is alien to WGmc (pp. 143–144). Such subordinators, though, were present in Middle High German, for example: durch daz ‘because’, für daz ‘because’, umbe daz ‘because’, Ûf daz ‘so that’, and so on (Paul et al. Reference Paul, Wiehl and Grosse1989, §§ 462–463). One must question whether the absence of such constructions in Modern German is evidence of properties attributable to WGmc in general.

Although the factual errors are relatively minor, the methodological errors appear to be more significant. Primary among these, I find, is the absence of evidence in key areas. The authors take the East Midlands dialect as representative of ME (p. 32) and West Saxon as representative of OE (p. 38). That ME in this respect does not possess features of OE should come as no surprise. The virtual absence of OE texts from the East Midlands region prevents one from making firm conclusions about the syntax of that dialect in the OE period. Furthermore, most lengthy texts in Anglian OE tend also to be glosses, which stifles a study so deeply rooted in syntax.

The same may be said for the Scandinavian component of their analysis. Emonds and Faarlund hold ON to be representative of the Scandinavian dialects present in England pre-Conquest. However, certain chronological considerations need to be included, such as the fact that most ON texts are contemporaneous with ME texts. Just as we do not have a clear idea of the syntax of English in the East Midlands prior to the ME period, so too are we lacking in significant and reliable data for Scandinavian syntax prior to the 11th century.

Similarly, statements to the effect that OE syntax “whose West Germanic … counterparts are closer to the presumed grammar of Indo-European” (p. 97) pose a methodological problem for arguments based on the rarity of the Scandinavian features within ME syntax (see, for example, p. 87). Given that ON and OE both derive from Proto-Germanic, and that OE syntax is closer to Proto-Germanic than to ON syntax (according to the authors), then ON must have begun with the same starting point as OE. If ON syntax could have evolved from Proto-Germanic syntax, then it should not be overly surprising that it could happen again in a very closely related language with a similar set of features.

One is also likely to find that scholars are not ready to accept syntactic features (as opposed to regular sound correspondences) as evidence of genetic affiliation. Granted that lexicon can make it difficult to establish a clear genetic affiliation (for example, the placement of Armenian within Indo-European), regular sound changes have always been the key basis of the Comparative Method (Fortson Reference Fortson2004). Emonds and Faarlund unfortunately marginalize the issue of phonology to a scant three pages within the work (pp. 157–159), and then only address three phonological characteristics (unpalatalized velars, loss of OE low off-glides in diphthongs, and loss of vowel length contrasts). Although the presence of unpalatalized velar stops in words such as get and give has been attributed to the Scandinavian origin of these words, the authors do not get into the messy dialectological details of how these features only gradually won out within ME.

These, however, are questions which can be resolved over time. As stated earlier, whether one finds their arguments compelling or not, there is likely to be a good deal of productive debate over the matter.