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Germanic Heritage Languages in North America: Acquisition, attrition and changeEdited by Janne Bondi Johannessen † and Joseph C. Salmons
[Studies in Language Variation 18] 2015
► pp. 201–216
Edited by Janne Bondi Johannessen † and Joseph C. Salmons
[Studies in Language Variation 18] 2015
► pp. 201–216
Maintaining a Multilingual Repertoire
Lexical Change in American Norwegian
This paper examines change in the lexicon of American Norwegian by investigating phonemic, semantic and lexical transfer from American English into the heritage Norwegian of the American Midwest. We observe these types of transfer when the semantic structure, phonemic structure, or both, are transferred from English to the heritage variety. Drawing on Matras’ (2009) insight that languages converge as a result of the need to simplify the selection procedure, we expect lexical transfer (involving both semantic and phonemic structure) to be the most abundant of these three phenomena as it provides more convergence (simplification). Our findings support this hypothesis and corroborate those of Haugen (1953), showing that lexical transfer is the most common route of convergence in American Norwegian.
Keywords: American Norwegian, heritage language, lexical transfer, multilingual repertoire, phonemic transfer, semantic transfer
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].
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Cited by (12)
Cited by 12 other publications
Johannessen, Janne Bondi & Joseph Salmons
2021. Germanic Heritage Varieties in the Americas. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 252 ff. 
Johannessen, Janne Bondi & Michael T. Putnam
2020. Heritage Germanic Languages in North America. In The Cambridge Handbook of Germanic Linguistics, ► pp. 783 ff.
Kinn, Kari
2020. Stability and attrition in American Norwegian nominals: a view from predicate nouns. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 23:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
Benor, Sarah Bunin
2015. How Synagogues Became Shuls. In Germanic Heritage Languages in North America [Studies in Language Variation, 18], ► pp. 217 ff.
Ehresmann, Todd & Joshua Bousquette
2015. Phonological Non-integration of Lexical Borrowings in Wisconsin West Frisian. In Germanic Heritage Languages in North America [Studies in Language Variation, 18], ► pp. 234 ff.
Eide, Kristin Melum & Arnstein Hjelde
2015. Borrowing Modal Elements into American Norwegian. In Germanic Heritage Languages in North America [Studies in Language Variation, 18], ► pp. 256 ff.
Hjelde, Arnstein
2015. Changes in a Norwegian Dialect in America. In Germanic Heritage Languages in North America [Studies in Language Variation, 18], ► pp. 283 ff.
Johannessen, Janne Bondi
2015. Attrition in an American Norwegian Heritage Language Speaker. In Germanic Heritage Languages in North America [Studies in Language Variation, 18], ► pp. 46 ff.
Johannessen, Janne Bondi & Signe Laake
2015. On Two Myths of the Norwegian Language in America. In Germanic Heritage Languages in North America [Studies in Language Variation, 18], ► pp. 299 ff.
Johannessen, Janne Bondi & Ida Larsson
2015. Complexity Matters: On Gender Agreement in Heritage Scandinavian. Frontiers in Psychology 6
Pierce, Marc, Hans C. Boas & Karen A. Roesch
2015. The History of Front Rounded Vowels in New Braunfels German. In Germanic Heritage Languages in North America [Studies in Language Variation, 18], ► pp. 117 ff.
[no author supplied]
2021. Heritage Languages around the World. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 11 ff.
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