Kva har skjedd med sjølvljodane? – A short essay
What happened to Norwegian vowels? Historical texts and modern analyses point to different conclusions. I wrote this short essay to explore some of the possibilities, and, in a quick summary, conclude which one I think is correct. The essay was written in Nynorsk, as an exercise for myself. I have included one paragraph from the middle and translated it into English, along with a download link for the essay in full, in Nynorsk.
Nynorsk
Dette reiser spørsmålet, kva har skjedd med nokre sjølvljodar i norsk? Har dei alle saman forsvunne? Eller fanst dei i utgangspunktet i det heile teke? Det finst nokre mogelegheiter: at Hægstad tok feil, og at vokalane i norsk ikkje hadde, eller har, to slags forskjellar; at moderne språkforsking tek feil, og vokalane i norsk hadde meir kompleksitet i fortida, men kanskje ikkje no; og at røyndomen ligg ein stad imellom dei to.
English
This raises the question, what has happened to some vowels in Norwegian? Have they all disappeared? Or did they even exist in the first place? There are a few possibilites: that Hægstad is wrong, and that the vowels in Norwegian did not, or do not, have two types of contrasts; that modern linguistic research is wrong, and that vowels in Norwegian were very much more complex in the past, although maybe not now; and that the reality lies somewhere in between the two.
A Brief History of Negation in French
Negation in French is not cut-and-dry, as I introduce this short essay. It covers the development of negation in French from the earliest days of Vulgar Latin (and perhaps earlier) to the present, exploring its uses in true negative senses and others (e.g. the ne explétif). Much of the information is drawn from pages in the Centre national des ressources textuelles et litéraires (CNRTL), particularly the entry on ne, but I feel those pages are somewhat clunky and hard to read, so I have summed them up in this essay, along with a scattering of other sources.
English
Negation, as a linguistic concept, is not cut-and-dry in French. It has a long and intriguing history, and appears today in many forms based around the negative adverb ne. Forms of negation involving ne can be neatly grouped into two categories based on whether the final sense of the utterance is interpreted as negative or not. Employment of the negative adverb where the final sense is not interpreted as negative is often denoted the ne explétif, “expletive” ne, in French language resources (Centre National des Ressources Texuelles et Lexicales [CNRTL], 2012). Likewise, the employment of ne where the sense is truly negative may be termed ne négatif, “negative” ne, which may seem a tautology, but it is useful here to denote exactly which use of ne is being discussed. Interestingly, in modern colloquial French, sentences can even be negative in sense without the use of the ne négatif (CNRTL, 2012).
A Tale of Three: The Dutch Gooise R
The pronunciation of /r/ throughout the Netherlands is evolving, as it has been for at least a century and a half. One particular realization of /r/ (actually three, all allophonically conditioned), that originating in Het Gooi or the Gooiland, has been spreading especially quickly, perhaps due to its use on public radio broadcasts and the prestige associated with it. This short piece explores the phonetics of the Gooise R, the allophonic conditions that give it its three distinct realizations, and the particular juxtaposition of historical factors that could have led to its advent.
English
The Gooise R is the name given to the pronunciation of r, canonically /r/ in Dutch, in the region of Het Gooi, which is centred on the city of Hilversum (Kos, 2010). Hilversum was the home of the international Dutch radio broadcasting service Radio Nederland Wereldomroep (Radio Nederland Wereldomroep, 2023), through whose broadcasts the Gooise pronunciation of /r/ has spread throughout the Netherlands. Due to the prestige once associated with radio broadcasters and this area (Kos, 2010), this pronunciation of /r/ has established itself as the prestigious one, and is now associated with middle and upper class varieties of Dutch, particularly those in Holland, but increasingly elsewhere in the Netherlands (Collins & Mees, 2003, pp. 199-201; Trudgill, 1974).