Language contact and shift as factors in change: a Shetland test-study Robert McColl Millar, University of Aberdeen, r.millar@abdn.ac.uk Shetlandic is arguably the most distinctive of the dialects of Scots, retaining many features in its lexis, phonology and structure which bear eloquent witness to the former presence of the now moribund North Germanic dialect, Norn. Some scholars (such as Jakobsen [1932] and Flom [1928-9]) have suggested that the transfer from a Norse dialect with a considerable Scots lexical input to a Scots dialect with considerable interference from Norn was not sudden, but rather a matter of ‘language mixture’. Barnes (1998) rejects this, seeing instead a long-term co-existence of the two varieties with considerable bilingualism, followed by the death of Norn and a subsequent transfer of certain features from that language into the remaining fully Scots dialect. A further complication is that there is considerable disagreement over when Norn died. When Jakobsen carried out fieldwork in the islands in the late nineteenth century, he found that, in many places, fragments of phrases and verse in Norn were still remembered. Some scholars – most notably Rendboe (1984) – have argued that Norn continued to be spoken in its full ‘purity’ in the more isolated islands until at least the early nineteenth century; most evidence points to a date in the middle of the previous century, however. But if this is the case, what reasons can be found for the survival of so much practical knowledge of the moribund language? What effects might this knowledge have had on the evolving Scots dialect? This paper will discuss these issues in the light of the theory of language death proposed by Sasse (1992) and some of the views on dialect formation proposed by Mufwene (2001). It will demonstrate that certain cultural features of Shetland – most notably the tabu-avoidance language of the fishing community (Fenton 1968-9) – along with the close relationship of Scots and Norn, may have maintained a Norn presence in the local dialect for a lengthy period after its supposed death. This ‘half-life’ raises questions over what we mean by ‘language mixture’ in relation to contact between close relatives. Barnes, Michael. 1998. The Norn Language of Orkney and Shetland. Lerwick:

Shetland Times. Fenton, Alexander. 1968-9. ‘The Tabu Language of the Fishermen of Orkney and

Shetland’. Ethnologia Europaea 2-3: 118-22. Flom, George T. 1928-9. ‘The transition from Norse to Lowland Scotch in Shetland,

1600-1850. A study in the decay of one language and its influence upon the language that supplanted it’. Saga Book of the Viking Society 10: 145-64.

Jakobsen, Jakob. 1932. An Etymological Dictionary of the Norn Language in

Shetland. 2 vols. London: David Nutt; Copenhagen: Vilhelm Prior. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2001. The ecology of language evolution. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Rendboe, Laurits. 1984. ‘How “worn out” or “corrupted” was Shetland Norn in its final stage?’ NOWELE 3: 53-88.

Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. 1992. ‘Theory of language death’. In Brenzinger, Matthias (ed.) Language Death. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter: 7-30.