Nordic languages

Det svenska sammandraget (1½ sida) och den svenska resumén (20 sidor) av min doktorsavhandling, som behandlar frågor kring de skandinaviska språkens ljudhistoria från 200-talet till 1200-talet e.Kr., belysta delvis av deras kontakter med samtida förstadier till finska och av gamla ortnamn från kontaktzonen, och delvis av teoretisk ljudhistorisk rekonstruktion. I två uppsatser granskas etymologier för ortnamn i södra och sydvästra Finland som belyser tidig språkkontakt. I etymologiska fallstudier behandlas namnen Kjulo och Tavastland. Namnet Karis jämförs med isländska sagornas Herdalar och förklaringen av hur fi. ruotsi 'svensk' hör ihop med ~ fsv. rōþ-och rȳtzẹr 'ryss' problematiseras. Flera farledsnamn diskuteras som är upptagna i det s.k. " Danska itinerariet " liksom ett större urval namn som kunde vara gamla i en Åländsk kontext: Eckerö, Geta, Jomala och Lemland, och därtill Järsö, Skedholm, Styrsö, Slemmern och Lemböte. De allra äldsta förhistoriska alternativen för att förklara namnen Åland och Ahvenanmaa problematiseras och ett nytt förslag framförs. I den första uppsatsen undersöks ett urval av lånord bevarade i finskan och dess närmaste släktspråk och särskilt vad deras ljuddräkter kan avslöja om förändringar i urnordiskans ljudsystem. T.ex. ordet fi. leikata 'att klippa, skära' återförs på en urfinsk form *lɤikka-med bakvokaliskt uttal, som har lånats tidigt från ett urnordiskt original *blaikijan 'göra blek, avhugga en bläcka', innan *blaik-frontades till *blaeik-. En tillrättalagd analys av många etymologier tidsbestämmer de granskade lånen till tiden före det nordiska i-omljudet. De två sista uppsatserna föreslår en ny ljudhistorisk beskrivning av 500/600-talens övergångsnordiska då de flesta omljudda vokalerna, såsom t.ex. nusvenskt y och ö, uppkom, vilket medförde växlingar illustrerade av svenska dölja/döljer/dolde, mat/mätt och duga/dygd. Generationer av ljudhistoriker har allt sedan Rasmus Rask och Jacob Grimm under nästan 200 år gäckats av ett otal problem som gäller när, hur och med vilka slutresultat omljuden från början verkade. I den fjärde uppsatsen visas att de senaste förklaringarna som erbjudits beträffande frontningsomljudet inte är hållbara. Ett nytt förslag presenteras för att förklara en större mängd ohanterliga data med färre allmängiltiga antagen. Problemet som den sista uppsatsen siktar på att lösa är hur frontningsomljudet, vokaliskt framkallad brytning (som t.ex. i svenska mjöd) och rundningsomljud (som t.ex. i svenska dugg av dagg) kan förklaras inom en och samma analys.

The Danish medieval laws: the laws of Scania, Zealand and Jutland, Ditlev Tamm and Helle Vogt (eds), has just been published at Routlegde, the book contains translations of the four most important medieval Danish laws written in the vernacular. The main texts are those of the Law of Scania, the two laws of Zealand -Valdemar's and Erik's -and the Law of Jutland, all of which date from the early thirteenth century. The Church Law of Scania and three short royal ordinances are also included. These provincial laws were first written down in the first half of the thirteenth century and were in force until 1683, when they were replaced by a national law. The laws, preserved in over 100 separate manuscripts, are the first extended texts in Danish and represent a first attempt to create a Danish legal language.

Completata nel 1789, sotto gli auspici dell'Aufklärung tedesca, quest'opera del curato Christfrid Ganander è in assoluto la prima trattazione scientifica di ampio respiro sulla mitologia finlandese e, insieme, una delle sue più preziose fonti a monte dell'imponente lavoro di riorganizzazione effettuato da Elias Lönnrot per il suo Kalevala. Impostato in forma enciclopedica, il Mythologia Fennica espone elementi tratti da tutti i livelli della tradizione, sia colta che popolare. Da un lato, vi sono i temi legati al mondo letterario delle saghe scandinave, dai miti sul misterioso "fondatore" Fornjótr alle battaglie degli antichi re svedesi contro gli stregoni finnar, per arrivare ai resoconti dei navigatori vichinghi sui misteriosi popoli incontrati lungo le più remote rotte nord-orientali. Ma Ganander riporta anche una notevole quantità di materiale folklorico finnico e lappone, che espone affidandosi all'autorità dei runot raccolti dalla viva voce del popolo. Tra divinità, spiriti guardiani ed esseri  soprannaturali, tra riti sciamanici e celebrazioni sincretiche, spiccano le tradizioni sui possenti Kalewan pojat, i "figli di Kalewa", tra i quali il lettore riconoscerà i principali eroi kalevaliani – Wäinämöinen, Ilmarinen, la signora di Pohjola, il malevolo Soini (Kullervo) – le cui fisionomie, non ancora addomesticate dalla penna di Lönnrot, si affacciano qui con tratti sovrumani e terrifici.
Con l’attenzione del naturalista e con l’entusiasmo del pioniere, Christfrid Ganander si sforza di far luce sul materiale mitico-leggendario della più remota periferia d’Europa, con analisi a volte ingenue, a volte sorprendenti, aprendo la strada alla successiva stagione del risveglio nazional-romantico finlandese.

The Old Norse verbs of the type þrøngva / þręngia display a variety of forms. Their infinitives end either in -va or -ia. Consistent with these infinitive endings, their present indicative and subjunctive paradigms are characterized by stem-final gv/kv or palatalized g/k, to which the inflectional endings beginning with a vowel are added. The verbs of the former pattern usually have the root vowel ø caused by w-umlaut, while those of the latter pattern variously have ø or ę (or its continuant). This rather complex situation is the result of two main factors: regular sound change and different paradigm levelling. The choice between the stem alternants of the verbs under discussion was dialectically determined.

Эпоха викингов стала главным потрясением для Европы в конце раннего Средневековья. Однако "внезапное" начало походов скандинавов на Запад в дейстительности не было таким уж спонтанным – ему предшествовал длительный и чрезвычайно интересный период культурной истории Северной Европы. Так называемый римский железный век и вендельский период породили яркое художественное ремесло, самобытный эпос, сформировали во многом уникальную скандинавскую мифологическую систему. Именно в эту эпоху возник феномен культуры, ставший визитной карточкой Скандинавии, – морской поход викингов. Книга, в которой анализируется фаза бурного подъема цивилизации Северной Европы, адресована не только специалистам-историкам, культурологам, археологам и религиоведам, но и всем читателям, интересующимся проблемами прошлого Европейского континента.

Among the numerous loanwords Saami has adopted from Proto-Norse there are also cases where the loan original has not been retained in modern or historically attested Nordic languages. Such etymologies can nevertheless be established on the basis of surviving cognate forms in other Germanic languages. Seven previously proposed etymologies of this kind are scrutinized, including those for North Saami duodji ‘handicraft’ and ráidalas ‘ladder’. Twelve new etymologies of the same type are argued for, among them explanations for the origin of North Saami ámadadju ‘face’, iktit ‘reveal, disclose’, and ivdni ‘color’.

This paper explores the periodisation of pre-documentary Scandinavian language and its synchronisation with
that of Finnic, the era in focus being the first millennium CE. Stratification of loanwords is discussed both as a means to
refine periodisation and as an aim in itself. The problems as concerns the latter half of the first millennium are highlighted.
The account is built on dissertation research defended in September 2018.

The rhotacising phoneme *z/ʀ started in Proto-Germanic as a voiced strident fricative */z/. Where not assimilated the descendant (by convention often denoted <ʀ>) ultimately coincided with an alveolar sonorant rhotic phoneme, in ONc denoted . The period elapsed from */z/ → <ʀ> → /r/ was over 1000 years. • The aim is to summarise the arguments why at least one intermediate stage of development must be posited. • To present what we may know of the intermediate stage(s), by combining, dating and evaluating evidence of different nature and different validity.

"This paper contains a new analysis of the runic inscription on the Tune stone, made on the basis of autopsies and various earlier proposals. While I agree with the view that there is a word missing at the top of side A (contra Grønvik 1981 and others), probably r<unoz>, I depart from the current communis opinio in proposing that side B consists of two independent subject-initial clauses. I argue that the first word in B1 is likely to be a personal name ending in -z and the subject of a verb meaning something like ‘erect’, of which staina ‘stone’ is the object. Moreover, I reject the analysis of dalidun in B2 as ‘made (nice), prepared’ (Seip 1929), presenting arguments supporting the emendation da<i>lidun (Bugge 1891, in NIæR), thus giving þrijoz dohtriz da<i>lidun arbija ‘three daughters shared the inheritance’. Finally, I resuscitate the old idea of Läffler (1892, 1896a, 1896b) concerning sijostez, taking it at face value and considering the phrase sijostez arbijano to reflect an archaic legal term meaning ‘the closest family heirs’. Following Läffler I assume that the form is derived from a reflexive (rather than a root meaning ‘bind’, Bjorvand 2008), an analysis supported by a parallel in archaic Latin (suus heres ‘family heir, self-successor’). I conclude that the three daughters of Wōdurīdaz shared the inheritance as the closest family heirs, while some other person (perhaps Wīwaz) erected the stone."

There is evidence for the so-called displacement verb second in the language of the runic inscriptions, which most previous scholarship has failed to recognize.This evidence consists of clauses in which the finite verb immediately precedes a subject pronoun (or a subject agreement marker). There is, however, variation with respect to the position of the verb, as it does not appear in second position in all cases. Contrary to common assumptions, however, there are only two reasonably clear examples of verb last order. The finite verb also occurs in absolute initial position in the clause, providing an example of verb first. Moreover, it can be argued that in the early runic language both object–verb and verb–object orders occur in the verb phrase. Furthermore, while determiners either precede or follow the head noun in the noun phrase, the adnominal genitive usually precedes it. On the other hand, only prepositions are attested in the runic corpus, no postpositions. These results shed light on the development of word order at the earliest stage of Germanic.

Recent studies in typology and historical linguistics have yielded new insights into the geographical distribution and diffusion of linguistic phenomena. Within Europe, several linguistic areas of different types and sizes have been proposed and discussed, including a European area (Standard Average European, henceforth SAE). Such claims are largely based on the grammars of the respective standard languages. In this contribution, I argue that we need (a) to focus also on intralingual variation in order to fully understand both the synchronic facts and the diachronic processes behind the formation of linguistic areas, and (b) to systematically include non-standard dialects or varieties in areal linguistic studies in order to gain a more representative empirical basis. Moreover, we have to take (c) dialect convergence across language boundaries into account, which I consider to be an important contact linguistic process in the emergence of areal phenomena. This view is supported by three case studies on areal phenomena in Northern European languages and dialects, investigating non-standard verbal constructions, dialectal phonological features, and medium-specific syntactic traits.

I den här uppsatsen presenteras en undersökning om monoftongeringen av de fornnordiska diftongerna æi, ǫu och øy. Syftet är att ta reda på hur och varför dessa primära, fallande diftonger monoftongerades i Sverige och Danmark.

Studien begränsar sig till monoftongeringar som lett till en lång monoftong. För att förstå denna typ av monoftongering utarbetas en teori, vilken förklarar dess orsakssamband. Processen monoftongering till lång monoftong indelas i två huvudtyper. Den ena är evolutiv monoftongering, där den betonade komponenten i diftongen assimilerar den obetonade, t.ex. ei > ē. Den andra är adaptiv monoftongering, där en monoftong ersätter en diftong av rent språkexterna skäl, t.ex. ai > ē.

Materialet utgörs huvudsakligen av tidigare forskning av olika slag, t.ex. äldre ljudhistoriska dialektbeskrivningar. Genom materialet visas hur diftongerna har utvecklats i Sverige och Danmark: såväl vilka uttal de fått i dialekterna, som vilka ljud de har fallit samman med och inte. För att ta reda på om monoftongeringen i Sverige och Danmark har kontinentalt eller västligt ursprung undersöks även utvecklingen av urgermanskt ai och au i de olika germanska fornspråken samt i Norge och på västerhavsöarna.

Med hjälp av materialet och orsakssambandet att den betonade komponenten ger monoftongens uttal vid evolutiv monoftongering, fastslås att det finns flera monoftongeringsområden i Danmark och Sverige som går tillbaka på olika evolutiva monoftongeringar. Dessa har skett vid olika tidpunkter och utgått från olika uttal av de betonade diftongkomponenterna.

Det finns ett stort, sammanhållet område från Flandern, genom Nederländerna, norra Tyskland, Danmark ändå upp till Västerbotten i norr med monoftongering av de urgermanska diftongerna *ai och *au. Flera olika evolutiva monoftongeringar har skett inom detta område. Detta tyder på att monoftongering inte bara sprids adaptivt genom diffusion av monoftongeringsprodukten. Monoftongeringsprocessen i sig själv kan spridas vid språkkontakt. De monoftongerade diftongerna i Danmark och Sverige är en del av ett monoftongeringskontinuum med kontinentalt ursprung.

This paper examines sound substitutions in Finnic loan words from Proto- and Ancient Scandinavian. Correlations are studied between Finnish/Estonian ai, äi, ei, and õi and eastern-Scandinavian descendants of the Proto-Scandinavian diphthong ai, which developed over ɛi into the Old Swedish ē. On the basis of the observed correlations, substitution practices and their chronologies are reconstructed. A further aim of the paper is to seek independent evidence for the quality of the diphthong during different stages of eastern Scandinavian development. This subject is intertwined through chronology with the borrowing of Finnish napakaira meaning
'bradawl, auger', namely with determining the form of the Scandinavian loan original *naƀaǥaiza- > Old-Icelandic nafarr (in particular *[z] > [r]) at the time of borrowing.
It is shown that within a material of some 80 potentially borrowed pre-Viking Age Proto-Finnic stems there is not a single ascertained case where a descendant of this Scandinavian diphthong would have been substituted by *ei, whereas the very few possible cases of *äi cannot be judged to testify to a fronted quality in the original. Substitution practices using back stems, which were subject to Finnic palatal vowel harmony, persisted for a surprisingly long time. In parallel with the principal ɑi → *ɑi substitution, one with *ëi ~ [ɤ̞i] is used in 2–4 ascertained cases. This substitution may testifiy to some variation or modification of the Proto-Scandinavian diphthong.

With the application of the Contrastive Hierarchy Theory, the contrastive features of preliterary Scandinavian vowels are here inferred from the interaction between targets and triggers for metaphonic fronting, rounding and breaking. One Proto-Scandinavian feature hierarchy is reconstructed for prominent syllables and another for non-prominent ones. The former hierarchy sustained contrasts that differed from the latter, including contrast for rounding and a preserved distinction between Pre-Germanic */i/ and */e/. A prominence system is reconstructed that predicts both the outcome of syncope and the distribution of the two vowel systems between syllables. The analysis neatly accounts for many notorious cruxes of umlaut and breaking that correlate with the prosodic position of the trigger, including the frequent absence of i-umlaut in light syllables.

Master's dissertation focusing on the diachronic development of Övdalian and its position within the Scandinavian dialectal landscape.
This first italian-written research on Övdalian offers an overview of the phonological, morphological and syntactical features of the dalecarlian vernacular in an historical and typological perspective.

Degree evaluation: 110/110 cum laude

In Faroese the phrasal clitic -sa is used in possessive constructions like Jákup=sa2 skegg
‘Jákup’s beard’. Originally the clitic could only be attached to kinship nouns or proper nouns
of persons and other nouns with a similar function, but in recent years the -sa has spread to
other host nouns like animate, human nouns. It will be shown that the process of spreading
happens according to the animacy/referentialy split, but that language replication also plays a
role. When discussing the origin of -sa it will be shown that a form like hansa ‘his’ in the
Ballad Language shows that the old genitive plural ending -a at some point in the history of
Faroese was productive as it is in South Swedish dialects.
Keywords: Animacy Hierarchy, clitic, language replication and contact, possessive
constructions, animacy/referentiality split.

Globalization has brought the English language to all corners of the globe.  English is the pervasive language of international connectivity and penetrates borders to assume roles within other language communities.  Iceland, like its European neighbors, feels this force.  The community worries that the local prominence of English is detrimental to the health of Icelandic – their own small but ancient language.  Even worse, fears are expressed that English may take over, inspiring a flurry of imperatives to stop English in its tracks.  This paper assesses to what extent fears that Icelandic is at risk vis-à-vis English are indeed justified.  It finds these fears are overstated because domestic communication remains firmly Icelandic, English is confined to international interests, and the globalization process - coupled with ideologies that link Icelandic identity to linguistic protectionism - has strengthened Iceland’s resolve to protect its language.

As is well-known, the Saami languages possess a large number of old loanwords from Proto-Norse, the ancestral form of the Nordic (North Germanic) languages. While Proto-Norse is not strictly speaking a solely reconstructed language, being rudimentarily attested in Elder Futhark inscriptions, most of what is known about the language is nevertheless based on reconstruction though the comparative method. As the period of extensive attestation of Norse began only several centuries after the Proto-Norse period, it is quite obvious that Proto-Norse has differed considerably from even the earliest attested forms of Old Norse. This is most evident in the realm of phonology, but it must also be true in regard to the language’s lexicon.
A productive avenue of loanword research is opened by the assumption that Proto- Norse had preserved lexical archaisms of Proto-Germanic ancestry, which later became lost in Nordic languages prior to their attestation. Thus, it is conceivable that Saami has adopted some Nordic words which are not found in the attested Nordic languages at all, but which have been preserved in their more southern Germanic sister languages. Indeed, in earlier research a couple of such borrowings have been proposed. In this brief paper I will present some additional remarks on seven etymologies of this type that have been put forward by earlier research, as well as present fourteen entirely new etymological comparisons of the same type.

The Hoard of Medieval Coins from the Village Stizhok. In the spring of 2011, a clay pot was found in a field nearby the village Stizhok (Shumsk district, Ternopil’ region,Ukraine). The pot contained about 2500 silver coins struck in the Golden Horde, Crimean Khanate, Caffa, Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, and Lithuania. The significant part of oriental coins bears the Tartar, Moldavian and Lithuanian countermarks. Most likely, the treasure was hidden during the Tartar military expansion atthe end of 15th and beginning of 16th centuries.

Keywords. Numismatics, medieval numismatics, coin hoard, Genoese colonies in Crimea,  Genoese history, Poland, Ukraine, Golden Horde, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Moldova, Romania, Wallachia, Asprokastron, 15th century.

Many languages of the World display the possibility of stacking more than one verb displaying the same inflectional features, in the presence or absence of a linking element homophonous to a coordinative conjunction, as represented in (1): (1) V1[TAM.Agr]x (and) V2[TAM.Agr]x What is striking about (1) is the fact that it is not interpreted as a coordination of two events occurring at the same time but as a single complex event, with V1 having scope over V2, an interpretation that is usually realised with a non-finite form of V2. This construction is also known with other names, such as

In my studies, I have investigated the nasal vowels of Old Norse. By Old Norse, I do not refer to only Old Norwegian and Old Icelandic, but also to Old Danish and Old Swedish. With the runic inscriptions and The First Grammatical Treatise as my primary sources, I have described in what phonological surroundings we find nasal vowels, why they are there, and at what stage the vowels have become nasal. I found out that the nasal vowels in Old Norse stem from different stages of the language. There is a layer of nasality from Proto-Germanic, one from Proto-Norse and one from Old Norse itself. My method of investigation has been to locate attestations of the ansuz-rune in the runic inscriptions, and the nasal vowels in The First Grammatical Treatise, and then compare these findings to modern Elfdalian, an old stage of a West Germanic language, Old Icelandic and Gothic. For Proto-Germanic, I have established that a vowel becomes nasalized if it precedes the cluster Vnh or a final nasal consonant which was located in the first syllable prior to its loss in Proto-Germanic. For Proto-Norse I have established that we have nasalization if a vowel precedes a nasal consonant. For Old Norse I have established that we have nasalization if a vowel precedes or succeeds a nasal consonant.

Reso celebre dalla trasposizione cinematografica di Dreyer del 1964, Gertrud, dramma in tre atti di Hjalmar Söderberg, mette in scena i conflitti e le contraddizioni d'amore. La protagonista, al pari della Nora ibseniana, rifiuta di portare avanti un matrimonio di facciata, benedetto dalla liturgia borghese, con il tranquillo e bonario Kanning. Ella anela, invece, a un amore totalizzante e coinvolgente, e lo ricerca dapprima in uno scrittore di successo, poi in un giovane artista emergente. Ma presto si renderà conto che un sentimento simile non alberga nel cuore dell'uomo, e stanca e disillusa, sceglierà infine un destino di solitudine e d'indipendenza, a una vita all'ombra del proprio amante.

The doctoral dissertation, accepted to be defended on 11 September 2018, contains five papers published on different forums. Some of the main findings, notably those concerning umlaut and the history of preserved contrast in the vowel system, have implications for Germanic historical phonology beyond the study of Scandinavian. In this respect the scrutiny has, during the research process, grown beyond the original scope of the research plan. The topics of the five papers are diverse, but they all relate to preliterary eastern Scandinavian sound systems during the millennium between the third and the thirteenth century CE. They all critically examine methodological issues involved in using diverse and imperfect evidence to verify etymologies or to pursue improved phonological reconstruction and analysis. The papers also all address, albeit to a quite varying degree and in different ways, sound substitutions in borrowings between Finnic and eastern Scandinavian vernacular.

Från sjö till hav. Namn-och ordstudier tillägnade Birgit Falck-Kjällquist. (From lake to sea. Studies of names and words dedicated to Birgit Falck-Kjällquist.) Edited by Maria Löfdahl, Fredrik Skott and Lena Wenner. Göteborg 2010. 164 pages. ISBN 978-91-7229-071-6.

This essay raises ethical questions regarding the loss of dialects. The objective facts regarding dialectal changes in Norway are well documented, but less often is emphasis put on the ethical considerations thereof. ‘Languages’ are protected and documented internationally, while ‘dialects’, despite being independent forms of language belonging to local cultures, seldom enjoy the same attention and consideration. With this in mind, I explore evidence of dialectal regionalisation from the regional centre of South Norway, Kristiansand, on the Norwegian dialect Vallemål, traditionally one of the most linguistically conservative dialects in Norway. This serves as an extreme example of dialect regionalisation, as Kristiansandsmål, the dialect of Kristiansand, is regarded as one of the most phonologically and morphologically simple dialects in Norway. Using the Nordic Dialect Corpus and previous literature, I investigate the effects of Kristiansandsmål‘s regiolectal spread on the lexis, phonology and morphology of Vallemål. The evidence suggests that regionalisation from Kristiansandsmål has had and is continuing to have a significant effect, evidenced by a generational loss of local dialect words, simplification of traditionally complex phonology and a reduction of marked morphological forms. Despite widespread documentation of such effects, the Norwegian state, while a signatory of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, appears to be taking little action to preserve the Norwegian dialect landscape. The current regiolectal trajectory points to a coming widespread loss of historic dialects of Norwegian. If linguistic diversity and its preservation are desirable, this widespread homogenisation acts as an opposing force to it.

This paper contains a new analysis of the runic inscription on the Tune stone, made on the basis of autopsies and various earlier proposals. While I agree with the view that there is a word missing at the top of side A (contra Grønvik 1981 and others), probably r<unoz>, I depart from the current communis opinio in proposing that side B consists of two independent subject-initial clauses. I argue that the first word in B1 is likely to be a personal name ending in-z and the subject of a verb meaning something like 'erect', of which staina 'stone' is the object. Moreover, I reject the analysis of dalidun in B2 as 'made (nice), prepared' (Seip 1929), presenting arguments supporting the emendation da<i>lidun (Bugge 1891, in NIaeR), thus giving þrijoz dohtriz da<i>lidun arbija 'three daughters shared the inheritance'. Finally, I resuscitate the old idea of Läffler (1892, 1896a, 1896b) concerning sijostez, taking it at face value and considering the phrase sijostez arbijano to reflect an archaic legal term meaning 'the closest family heirs'. Following Läffler I assume that the form is derived from a reflexive (rather than a root meaning 'bind', Bjorvand 2008), an analysis supported by a parallel in archaic Latin (suus heres 'family heir, self-successor'). I conclude that the three daughters of Wōdurīdaz shared the inheritance as the closest family heirs, while some other person (perhaps Wīwaz) erected the stone.

Während die Syntax in der dialektologischen Forschung traditionell eher am Rande vorkommt, hat das Interesse an dialektsyntaktischen Fragestellungen unterschiedlicher Art in den letzten Jahren spürbar zugenommen. Dies zeigt sich etwa in den recht groß angelegten Forschungsprojekten zur Dialektsyntax 1 , aber auch in einer Zunahme von Publikationen zu entsprechenden Themen. Dabei bleibt der Forschungsstand zur Syntax des Niederdeutschen bislang weiter dürftig, wobei aber auch hier immerhin ein zunehmendes Interesse zu verzeichnen ist (vgl. BERG/HÖDER/LANGHANKE in diesem Band).

Syntactic reconstruction has virtually been outlawed in historical-comparative research for a long time, more or less ever since Watkins’ (1964, 1976) influential work on the problems of reconstructing word order for Proto-Indo-European. Recently, through the emergence of Construction Grammar, where complex syntactic structures are regarded as form–function pairings, a resurgence of syntactic reconstruction is made possible, as complex syntactic structures become a legitimate object of the Comparative Method. Given the legitimacy of syntactic reconstruction, and hence the possible reconstruction of argument structure constructions (Barðdal & Eythórsson 2011, Eythórsson & Barðdal 2011, Barðdal 2012), a major question arises as to whether also grammatical relations are reconstructable for earlier undocumented language periods. We argue that if the constructions singling out grammatical relations can be reconstructed for a proto-branch, the grammatical relations following from these are also reconstructable for that proto-branch. In order to illustrate our methodology, we show how a reconstruction of the subject function in Proto-Germanic may be carried out, more specifically of oblique subjects predicates like ‘hunger’, ‘thirst’ and ‘lust’ and others, based on the subject properties found in the earliest Germanic daughter languages.