This chapter presents a general description of North American Icelandic (NA Icelandic), a heritage language spoken by a few hundred speakers in language conclaves in the Northern Plains of the United States and Canada. The description is mainly based on studies of the development of Icelandic as a heritage language in intense contact with English in North America (Arnbjörnsdóttir 2006). Generalizations about features of the NA Icelandic lexicon, morpho-syntax and phonology are presented in an effort to lay the groundwork for the next stage of NA Icelandic heritage linguistics. Finally, a possible future research agenda for NA Icelandic is outlined that is in line with the recent discussion about the importance of heritage languages for our understanding of the acquisition and loss of language (Benmamoun et al. 2010).
Angantýsson, Ásgrímur. 2007. “Verb-Third in Embedded Clauses in Icelandic.”Studia Linguistica 61(3): 237–260.
Arnbjörnsdóttir, Birna. 1990. “Use of Icelandic Among Bilinguals in North Dakota.” Unpublished surveys.
Arnbjörnsdóttir, Birna. 2006. North American Icelandic: The Life of a Language. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.
Bar-Shalom, Eva and Elena Zaretsky. 2008. “Selective Attrition in Russian-English Bilingual Children: Preservation of Grammatical Aspect.”International Journal of Bilingualism 12: 281–302.
Benmamoun, Elabbas, Silvina Montrul and Maria Polinsky. 2010. “White Paper: Prolegomena to Heritage Linguistics.” Harvard University.
Bessason, Haraldur. 1967. “A Few Specimens of North American Icelandic.”Scandinavian Studies 9(1): 115–147.
Bessason, Haraldur. 1984. “Íslenskan er lífseigari en nokkurt annað Þjóðarbrotsmál í Kanada.”Interview in Morgunnblaðið, February 12: 64–65.
Blake, Robert. 1983. “Mood Selection Among Spanish Speaking Children, Ages 4 to 12.”The Bilingual Review 0: 21–32
Eiríksson, Hallfreður Ö. 1974. Interviews with Canadian Icelanders. Unpublished manuscript. University of Manitoba.
Eyþórsson, Þórhallur. 1997–1998. “Uppruni sagnfærslu í germönskum málum.”Íslenskt mál 19–20: 133–180.
Håkansson, Gisela. 1995. “Syntax and Morphology in Language Attrition. A Study of Five Bilingual, Expatriate Swedes.”International Journal of Applied Linguistics 5: 153–171.
Haugen, Einar. 1956. Bilingualism in the Americas: A Bibliography and Research Guide. (Publications of the American Dialect Society 26). Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.
Hjelde, Arnstein. 1996. “The Gender of English Nouns Used in American Norwegian.” In Language Contact Across the North Atlantic, ed. by P.S. Ureland and I. Clarkson, 297–312. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
Jakobson, Roman. 1968. Child Language. Aphasia and Phonological Universals. The Hague: Mouton.
Johannessen, Janne Bondi. This volume. “Attrition in an American Norwegian heritage language speaker.”
Jónsson, Jóhannes Gísli. 1997–1998. “Sagnir með aukafallsfrumlagi.”Íslenskt mál 19–20: 11–43.
Karttunen, Frances. 1977. “Finnish in America: A Case Study in Monogenerational Language Change.” In The Social Dimensions of Language Change, ed. by Ben Blount and Mary Sanches, 173–184. New York: Academic Press.
Kim, Ji Hye, Silvina Montrul and James Yoon. 2009. “Binding Interpretation of Anaphors in Korean Heritage Speakers.”Language Acquisition 16(1): 3–35.
Kim, Ji Hye, Silvina Montrul and James Yoon. 2010. “Dominant Language Influence in Acquisition and Attrition of Binding: Interpretation of the Korean Reflexive caki.”Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 13: 73–84.
Kristjánsson, Júníus. 1983. Vesturfaraskrá, 1870–1914: A Record of Emigrants from Iceland to America 1870–1914. Reykjavík: University of Iceland.
Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Lambert, Richard and Barbara Freed. 1982. Loss of Language Skills. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Milroy, Leslie. 1987. Observing and Analyzing Natural Language: A Critical Account of Sociolinguistic Method. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Polinsky, Maria. 2006. “Incomplete Acquisition: American Russian.”Journal of Slavic Linguistics 14: 191–262.
Polinsky, Maria. 2008. “Gender Under Incomplete Acquisition: Heritage Speakers’ Knowledge of Noun Categorization.”Heritage Language Journal 6(1): 1–33.
Polinsky, Maria. 2011. “Reanalysis in Adult Heritage Language.”Studies in Second Language Acquisition 33: 305–328.
Putnam, Michael and Birna Arnbjörnsdóttir. 2015. “Anaphoric Binding in North American Icelandic.” In Moribund Germanic Heritage Languages in North America. Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Findings, ed. by B. Richard Page and Michael T. Putnam, 203–223. Leiden: Brill.
Sigurðsson, Gísli. 1984. Viðtöl við Vestur-Íslendinga. Unpublished interviews. University of Manitoba.
Stefánsson, Vilhjálmur. 1903. “English Loan-Nouns Used in the Icelandic Colony of North Dakota.”Dialect Notes 2: 354–362.
Viðarsson, Heimir Freyr. 2009. “Tilbrigði í fallmörkun aukafallsfrumlags – Þágufallshneigð í forníslenksu.”Íslenskt mál 31: 15–66.
Westergaard, Marit and Merete Anderssen. This volume. “Word order variation in Norwegian possessive constructions: Bilingual acquisition and attrition.”
2024. The Intonation of Declaratives and Polar Questions in Modern versus Heritage Icelandic. In The Phonetics and Phonology of Heritage Languages, ► pp. 259 ff.
Laleko, Oksana
2023. 5. The Roadmap of Heritage Language Research in North America. Publication of the American Dialect Society 108:1 ► pp. 95 ff.
Dehé, Nicole & Tanja Kupisch
2022. Prepositional phrases and case in North American (heritage) Icelandic. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 45:3 ► pp. 254 ff.
Johannessen, Janne Bondi & Joseph Salmons
2021. Germanic Heritage Varieties in the Americas. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 252 ff.
Putnam, Michael T., Lara Schwarz & Andrew D. Hoffman
2021. Morphology of Heritage Languages. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 613 ff.
Dehé, Nicole
2018. The Intonation of Polar Questions in North American (“Heritage”) Icelandic. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 30:3 ► pp. 213 ff.
Johannessen, Janne Bondi
2018. Factors of variation, maintenance and change in Scandinavian heritage languages. International Journal of Bilingualism 22:4 ► pp. 447 ff.
Kasstan, Jonathan R, Anita Auer & Joseph Salmons
2018. Heritage-language speakers: Theoretical and empirical challenges on sociolinguistic attitudes and prestige. International Journal of Bilingualism 22:4 ► pp. 387 ff.
[no author supplied]
2021. Heritage Languages around the World. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 11 ff.
[no author supplied]
2021. Grammatical Aspects of Heritage Languages. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 579 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.