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Grammaticalisation due to homonymy avoidance In Gudbrandsdalen /æpr˛ede/? 1
Author(s) -
Enger HansOlav
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
transactions of the philological society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.333
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1467-968X
pISSN - 0079-1636
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-968x.2007.00183.x
Subject(s) - analogy , suffix , definiteness , linguistics , grammaticalization , class (philosophy) , word order , history , philosophy , computer science , artificial intelligence
This paper is devoted to the historical origin of the definiteness suffix ‐ de on a class of neuter nouns in the Northern Gudbrandsdalen dialect of Norwegian. Homonymy avoidance, which has previously been invoked, is argued to be irrelevant. Rather, the suffix has arisen through reanalysis in combination with analogy; it appears to be an example of what Haspelmath (1995) has termed ‘secretion’. The case is theoretically interesting, both because it indicates that analogy can work from the minority on the majority and because it shows that analogy in one place in a system can lead to complications elsewhere.