North Germanic Negation - Munin

INTRODUCTION
The negative markers in the dialects considered in this dissertation are listed in Table 2. The full
negative markers may receive stress and as such function as the emphasised negation, while the
short ones cannot.
Table 2: The negative markers in the selected Mainland North Germanic dialects
Dialect of Full negative markers short negative markers
Oslo ikke ke
Setesdal inkje kje
Bergen ikkje kje
Stryn/Nordfjord ikkje kje
Trøndelag itj, ikke (i)tj
Senja ikkje kje
Älvdalen int(e), (itjä) it
Northern Ostrobothnian 16 i(n)t it
Most of the varieties have only one type of negative markers, e.g. the IKKE-type in the dialects of
Oslo, Bergen, Senja, and Stryn/Nordfjord. The Trøndelag dialects exhibit negative markers of two
types, the traditional itj (< int, Dalen et al. 2008) and the marker ikke, which is relatively new in this
area (Endresen 1988; Dalen et al. 2008). The same holds for Övdalian, which traditionally has two
types of markers, int (observe the similarity with the Trøndelag dialects) and itjä (of the IKKE type, cf.
Garbacz 2009: 118). The latter marker is however no longer very productive. The other dialects
basically have only one type of negative marker. 17
1.4.2 Historical background and Jespersen’s Cycle
Historically, the IKKE-type stems from the Old North Germanic marker ekki according to the
Norwegian, Swedish and Danish dictionaries Norsk Ordbok 2014 (NO2014); Svenska Akademiens
ordbok (SAOB), and Ordbog over the Danske Sprog (ODS). The form ekki was originally the neuter
form of enginn (‘nobody’), and it comes from *eit-gi (lit. ‘one N -gi’, where gi is a negative suffix). This
negative marker replaced the negative adverb eigi (lit. ‘always-gi’ Heggstad et al. 1993: 86), which is
the ancestor of the negative marker EI (via eigh/egi, egh in Middle Norwegian/Old Swedish and Old
Danish, respectively).
The type INTE is younger than IKKE, and according to SAOB, this form stems from a younger Old
Swedish neuter form of ingen (‘nobody’), namely ingte, inte or intit.
15 According to Christensen (1936) the Danish marker enne originates from a negative QP ænigh(æ), meaning
nobody according to the dictionary of the dialects of Jutland (Feilberg 1886-1914), which he compares with the
QP manigh(æ) (‘many’).
16 According to Huldén (1995) it varies from dialect to dialect in Ostrobothnia whether int or it is used as plain
negation.
17 In the traditional dialect of Bornholm (Teinnæs 1929) three sentential negative markers are used
productively: ei, ijkje and inte. Ei is heavily emphatic, whereas the other two are used as the plain negative
marker.
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