Adverbial renewal cycles in Faroese: Adverbial renewal cycles in Faroese

Adverbial Renewal Cycles in Faroese
Hjalmar P. Petersen (University of the Faroe Islands) & Renata Szczepaniak (University of Leipzig).
Keywords: Faroese, semantic bleaching, renewal-cycle, exaptation, expressive morphology, lexicalization, grammaticalization, language change.

The adverbial suffixes we will address in this talk are: -i, -ni, -nani, -(i)na(r), -is, -isni, -isna(r), and -sta(ni). These suffixes are not a result of a simple lexicalization process where a lexeme turns into a derivational suffix, mans lík ‘man’s body’ > manslík ‘mans-body’ > mansligur ‘manly’. When explaining the development of these suffixes, different renewal cycles containing semantic bleaching, partial degrammaticalization, renewal or even exaptation, re-analysis and expressiveness have to be drawn.
For instance, the suffix -ni is a result of a complex renewal cycle which begins with the suffix -an, e.g. haðan ‘from there’ and vestan ‘from the west’. -an, which originally had an ablative meaning, became opaque in the history of Faroese (cf. hvaðan ert tú frá ‘whence.ABL are you from’). This weakening and loss of the semantics of -an made it possible to reinforce such forms with the locative suffix -i, e.g. haðan+i means now ‘from LOCATION there’ (cf. út ‘out’ : út+i ‘outside’). In the reinforced forms, the (former) grammatical marker A – in this case -an – was not only supported by an additional expression B, here the derivational suffix -i, that strengthened and renewed the locative meaning. The combination of both markers has also been the starting point of a subsequent reanalysis of a new suffix -ni in Faroese. As a typical case of reinforcement (a renewal process), the new suffix is used as an expressive suffix. For instance, the adverb bara ‘only’ and púra ‘quite’ do not have comparison. Still the superlative suffix -sta is added to these adverbs, clearly with an expressive meaning. Expressiveness in language does become opaque, and speaker have later added -ni to these adverbs, which shows that -ni in barastani/púrastani has an expressive meaning, cf. hatta er bara so ‘that is just so’ and hatta er barastani so ‘that is definitely so’. While the expressive function of -ni is almost lost in some expressions in colloquial Faroese (oftani from ofta ‘often’ now basically has lost its expressive meaning), it can still be added e.g. to the suffix -liga in order to express emphasis, cf. hjartaliga tillukku ‘heartly congratulation’ and hjartaligani tillukku ‘heartly congratulation, and I really mean it’.
One cycle, we will address in the talk is thus: (1) haðan ‘from there’ >> haðan+i ‘from LOCATION there’ >> haðani (renewal and reanalysis) >> ofta+ni (originally expressive) >> hjarta+liga+ni ‘heartly, and I really mean it’ (expressive use).
The different path of development can be observed in the case of the former genitive -s of ija-stems, e.g. hafleiði-s ‘sea-path.GEN’. While the genitive case is on decline in contemporary Faroese, the former genitive -s is subject to another reanalysis into an adverbial suffix: hafleiði-s sea-path.GEN’ > havleið-is ‘seaways’, soleiði-s > soleið-is, where the stem synchronically is leið- ‘path’, not *leiði-. If exaptation is understood as “the promotion of meaningless or redundant material that does new (morphosyntactic or phonological) or semantic work”, then the use of the meaningless -s (meaningless, as the genitive was obsolete in the mind of speakers), as part of a suffix, then the development into the adverbial suffix -is could be interpreted as a case of exaptation.
Note that -ni is frequently added to -is >> isni, for expressive reasons, and so is -na >> isna. The origin of the suffix -na is the definite ending, which means adverbial accusative vit arbeið allar tíðirnar ‘we work all the time’ changed (by means of univerbation) to an adverb allatíðina, where speaker make use of -na as a suffix as in hatta hoyrir ongastaðna heima lit.: that belongs no place home = ‘that is a scandal’. Note now that this -na may be added to her beint ‘here right’ >> herbeint ‘hereright’ = ‘right here’ >> herbeintna ‘right here’, where it has an expressive function. Na is formally meaningless, but it does new semantic work, namely, it is expressive, and could thus be regarded as a case of exaptation, and so is -ni in adverbs like (dialectal from Suðuroy), allastaðnani ‘all place-na-ni’.