Variation in Faroese and the development of a spoken standard: In search of corpus evidence

Abstract

Although Faroese exhibits extensive linguistic variation and rapid social change, the language is near-uncharted territory in variationist sociolinguistics. This article discusses some recent social changes in Faroese society in connection with language change, focusing in particular on the development of a de facto spoken standard, Central Faroese. Demographic mobility, media and education may be contributing to this development in different ways. Two linguistic variables are analysed as a first step towards uncovering the respective roles of standardisation, dialect levelling and dialect spread as contributing processes in the formation of Central Faroese: morphological variation in -st endings and phonological variation in -ir and -ur endings. The analysis confirms previously described patterns of geographically constrained variation, but no generational or stylistic differences indicative of language change are found, nor are there clear signs that informants use Central Faroese. The results may in part be due to the structure of the corpus used.

Language shift and apparent standardisation in Early Modern English

“…In the historical cases discussed in this paper, we were fortunate enough to be able to almost exclude standardisation as a possibility due to the absence of a suitable vehicle like education, but in most modern cases it is likely that both processes are relevant to different degrees, depending on the range of dialects in contact and the strength of the standard. Recent work on the standardisation of spoken Faroese, for example, where there is no strong ideology of a spoken standard, suggests that vertical and horizontal levelling processes are at work simultaneously (Knooihuizen 2014). Crucially, the outcome of the completed processes does not allow us to distinguish which cases of standardisation are real, and which are apparent, giving rise to unbalanced interpretations of linguistic histories.…”

Glossa som forskningsverktøy. Hva folk søker etter og hva resultatene brukes til

“…Det finnes mange eksempler på morfologi-studier av NDC; i tillegg til Spilling & Haugen kan vi nevne Garbacz (2014) om dativ i norske dialekter og Knooihuizen (2014) (honom, hånom, honnom, hånnom, håno, hono, hånno, honno), og varianter av flertallsbøyde substantiv, da med søkefunksjonen 'ord som slutter på' (-om, -åm, -å og -o). Resultatet etter sortering er 17 treff på hankjønnspronomen med dativform, fordelt på 7 målepunkter, og 156 treff på flertallsord med dativform, fordelt på 35 målepunkter.…”