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NORMS fieldwork in Älvdalen 2007

From 29 May until 1 June NORMS organized a fieldwork on Övdalian, a variety of Scandinavian spoken in Älvdalen, Sweden. The trip was planned and administered by the Lund group in the NORMS network which also set up a homepage with various resources to prepare the participants for the excursion. Below follow the blog entries that were written during and right after the fieldwork, extracted from the blog archive and ordered chronologically. An entry on the follow-up trip in October can also be found.
Älvdalen, gruppebilde
The participants at the NORMS fieldwork in Älvdalen, May/June 2007. Back and middle row from left to right: Lars-Olof Delsing, Lena W. Andersen, Karen T. Hagedorn, Sten Vikner, Gunnar Nyström, Jan-Ola Östman, Henrik Jørgensen, Peter Svenonius, Piotr Garbacz, Janne B. Johannessen, Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson, Lisa Södergård, Ásgrímur Angantýsson, Øystein A. Vangsnes, Pål K. Eriksen, Signe Laake, Henrik Rosenkvist. Front row from left to right: Christer Platzack, Mai E. Tungseth, Christine B. Østbø, Marit Julien, Åshild Søfteland, Lars Steensland, Karine Stjernholm. (Photo: Björn Rehnström, Mora Tidning)

Some of the raw data collected during the fieldwork have been assembled in the ScanDiaSyn Document Chest. Scientific reports are expected to appear in various publication channels, and notes thereof will be made here. The following media pieces have so far appeared in connection with the fieldwork:


Tysdag 29. mai
Älvdalen, Piotr Garbacz
Piotr Garbacz being interviewed by SR Dalarna (Swedish Radio, the Dalarna section) (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes)
The NORMS fieldwork on Övdalian (aka ‘the Älvdalen dialect’ or ‘Elfdalian’) started today. 22 linguists from all but one of the seven NORMS partners have gathered here in Älvdalen for four intensive days, and the event commenced this morning with two overview lectures by Gunnar Nyström and Lars Steensland, probably the two most knowledgeable persons on the planet when it comes to the linguistic properties of this variety of Scandinavian. Lars will be with us for the whole week, guiding and helping us in our attempts to approach the grammatical structure of Övdalian, and he has already been of invaluable help.

Älvdalen, Sten Vikner
Sten Vikner investigates Object Shift in Övdalian on site in Älvdalen (Photo: Marit Julien)
After lunch we had our first encounter with native speakers of this exotic language from the hamlet Västmyckeläng. An impressive number of willing informants showed up at the agreed meeting place, allowing for a good spread on the equally substantial number of researchers. A variety of issues were, and will continue to be, investigated: nominal and adjectival syntax and morphology, verb movement and V2, verbal directional particles, argument structure, Object Shift, negation etc. Sten Vikner was able to confirm, beyond doubt, Levander's claim that Övdalian lacks Object Shift altogether: unstressed pronominal objects will follow all sentential (VP-external) adverbs, not just negation.

More to follow...

- Øystein





Onsdag 30. mai

Älvdalen, elv
The river in “River Valley” between Åsen and Brunnsberg (Photo: Christine B. Østbø)
The second day of the Övdalian fieldwork is coming to an end. We visited two hamlets today, Åsen and Brunnsberg in the northern part of the (core) municipality. There was a multitude of informants today also – and a multitude of coffee, buns, and cookies and the likes too! So far some seventy informants have acquainted themselves with one or more of us.

Älvdalen, bondesmöret
Övdalian definitely has an extended, partitive use of the definite article. At least in part... Click on the picture! (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes)
Data and information are amassing, and we are all learning a lot. Since last night, when Lars Steensland made me aware of it, I've been very fascinated by the existence of a construction which can be paraphrased as follows: "Which does he look like in his face?" (Ukin sir an aut i kråisè?), meaning ‘What does he look like in the face?’. The equivalent of ‘which’ also corresponds to ‘who’. But not only that: the neuter form can be used as a complementizer corresponding to ‘whether’. And that complementizer can even introduce direct yes/no questions! Now, adding to my fascination, in the first construction ‘which’ agrees in gender and number with the subject in classical Övdalian, and also according to some of the informants I have met (from Brunnsberg). But one informant (from Åsen) today wanted an uninflected form throughout the paradigm and another (from Lövnäs, Finnmarken) wanted either the uninflected form or simply the neuter throughout. As for more detailed information about how this construction relates to other Scandinavian wh-determiners/-modifiiers more generally, I'll leave that for coming scientific reports.

Lots of other teasers can be given. Stay tuned and maybe they'll appear...

- Øystein





Torsdag 31. mai

Älvdalen, bystuga
At the entrance to the ‘Bystuga’ in Klitten, Älvdalen (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes)


Älvdalen, kaffebord
Coffee table in Klitten. (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes)
Today we made visits to the hamlets Loka and Klitten, both on the eastern side of the valley, some kilometers north of the center. Lots of informants, mostly older people, showed up today as well. And there was again no lack of coffee, buns, and cakes!

When most of the group went to Loka in the morning a smaller group visited the (secondary) school to talk to adolescents. Övdalian is an endangered language, and it's both quite clear that it's a minority language among the young inhabitants of the municipality and furthermore that those young kids that do speak it have a version heavily influenced by Swedish. The official policy does not seem to encourage the use of the language in school, i.e. not even outside of the teaching situation. But several of the youngsters expressed considerable pride in their native tongue.

Älvdalen, Vangsnes
Øystein Vangsnes discerning information about adjectival inflection and postadjectival indefinite articles in Övdalian (Photo: Henrik Rosenkvist)
As for the linguistic investigations we keep testing our various issues. Yesterday I got some pointers suggesting that the optional masculine ending on attributive adjectives -an is not possible on nationality adjectives, a group of adjectives which otherwise generally do not allow a postadjectival (doubling) indefinite article (cf. Greek double definite determiner spread). I found those pointers quite curious and wanted to test them out better, and this morning I spoke to one guy who disconfirmed the information from yesterday. Then in the afternoon I spoke to another guy who repeated what I had found yesterday! So now I'm utterly confused! I tried hard to test the issue in more detail with the latter informant, with few advances, so I'll have to make some efforts tomorrow during the last two sessions we'll have here.

Älvdalen, Svenonius
Peter Svenonius testing out expressions of directed motion on an older speaker of Övdalian (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes)
Otherwise I'm pleased to see that other bits of results have been put forward in the comments!...






- Øystein





Fredag 1. juni
Älvdalen, majstång
Majstång från i fjol, Blyberg, Älvdalen (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes)
Today was our final day of fieldwork in Älvdalen; we visited two villages in the south of the region, namely Blyberg and Evertsberg. Once again, we were welcomed with a terrific turnout and were able to speak with a great number of residents. By the end of it all, we had interviewed 168 people, which represents something like 5% of the population of Övdalian speakers.

Älvdalen, Blyberg
Linguists at work in Blyberg (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes)
In a long conversation with a gentleman from Evertsberg, I was able to confirm case and agreement patterns that obtained at previous sites, while also noting certain differences between the west and east bank dialects. He turned out to be quite a poet, and treated me to some of his original verses.

Tonight we had a celebratory dinner with the local organizers, and there were speeches and gifts and toasts and general merriment.

- Peter





Älvdalen, oppslag i Evertsberg
A note posted on boards around Evertsberg, calling speakers of Övdalian to meet with the NORMS researchers (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes)
In Evertsberg Linda Axelsson treated us to some local traditional music played on the violin and a kind of ruler, among other tunes this waltz composed by Ekorr-Anders ("Squirrel-Anders”) (MMS recording: Øystein A. Vangsnes).














Måndag 4. juni
Ovdalen, Steensland og Svenonius
Lars Steensland and Peter Svenonius discussing Övdalian syntax (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes)
During four days of intense fieldwork, 22 linguists (including 7 professors) from Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland visited 7 villages as well as a school in Älvdalen in search for clues to current Övdalian syntax. We were superbly guided and supported by one of the foremost experts on Övdalian, prof. Lars Steensland, who also held one of the introductory lectures.

In total, 168 Övdalian informants were registered. This makes the workshop one of the largest Scandinavian dialect surveys in recent times. The following overview shows the distribution of informants across the villages:

Älvdalen, Johannessen på skulen
Interviews at the school in Älvdalen. (Photo: Signe Laake)
   village 1, Västmyckeläng: 26 informants
   village 2, Åsen: 21 informants
   village 3, Brunnsberg: 17 informants
   village 4, Loka: 29 informants
   village 5, Klitten: 19 informants
   village 6, Blyberg: 27 informants
   village 7, Evertsberg: 15 informants
   the school (age group 13-15): 14 informants
    
   total: 168 informants

As for age groups, 5 informants were born before 1920 (two were born in 1916), and 21 were born in the 1920s. Our youngest informant, who did not partake in any interviews but whose Övdalian has been documented on film, was born in 2004. Considering that the number of speakers of Övdalian has been estimated to 3000, about 5,5% of the total number of speakers have participated in our investigations.

Ovdalen, gamstuga
Old house in Åsen, Älvdalen (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes)
Although no results from the workshop have yet (June 4, 2007) been issued, we can conclude that Övdalian is a living language with a surprising number of interesting morphosyntactic features (a few examples: three genders, three cases, verb agreement, referential null subjects, negative concord, verb raising in embedded clauses, a complex prepositional system). Typologically, it seems to be a mixture of western and eastern Scandinavian linguistic features, as pointed out by Gunnar Nyström in one of the introductory lectures.

Several of the researchers who went to Älvdalen merely for linguistic purposes are now members of Ulum Dalska, the organization for preservation of Övdalian, which gave essential support to the workshop. Nù ir eð liuotwiktut at jåpums að so it övdalskà far!

– Henrik R




Älvdalen, Rosenkvist, Delsing og Garbacz
Henrik Rosenkvist summarizes the NORMS fieldwork on Övdalian at the closing dinner on 1 June. Lars-Olof Delsing (center) and Piotr Garbacz (right) were also involved in the organization (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes)

Älvdalen, tømmervegg
Timber wall of a barn in Evertsberg, Älvdalen (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes)
The NORMS Älvdalen experience is over for now, i.e. disregarding the work that lies ahead with analysing the material and the impressions from last week's intense investigations. We're back at our various home institutions. Peter, Gunnar Hrafn, and I drove our rental car back to Oslo airport (a 4 hour drive), and on our way we stopped in Nesvollberget in Trysil (Norway) to pay Kjell Sletten a visit. Kjell, native to Trysil, has become an Övdalian afficiado and a dedicated member of Ulum Dalska, and he showed up at Brunnsberg, Blyberg, and Evertsberg when we had our sessions there.

Älvdalen, Kjell Sletten
Kjell Sletten and his wife Anne at their home in Nesvollberget, Trysil (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes)
We were treated to coffee and waffels with various sorts of delicious home made jam by Kjell's wife, Anne, native to Rauland in Telemark, and during our short stop we managed to ask some hasty questions about their different dialects. Kjell's dialect has undergone monophtongization, but the monophtong derived from e.g. older /au/ is nevertheless distinct from other vowels in his phoneme inventory: /'ø:re/ ‘ear’ is distinct from /'œ:re/ ‘trout’ is distinct from /‘ä:re/ ‘black grouse’ (pardon my representation). And for the Rauland dialect we learned that degree ‘how’ is identical in form to manner ‘how’ (both høss) whereas ‘where’ and ‘what’ are distinct, thus conforming to my generalization that manner ‘how’ is always bigger or identical to degree ‘how’ across (Mainland) Scandinavian varieties.

- Øystein





Måndag 11. juni
Älvdalen, bensinkvittering
Welcome back! (MMS-bilde: Øystein A. Vangsnes)
Vel heime i Tromsø tok eg, då eg skulle skriva reiserekning, eit nærmare blikk på bensinkvitteringa frå OK i Älvdalen. Då først såg eg helsinga!

- Øystein








Lovdàn sjäkst oktober
Älvdalen, sjö (oktober 2007)
Lake Nässjön in Älvdalen October 2007 (Photo: Piotr Garbacz)

Henrik Rosenkvist, Piotr Garbacz, Kristine Bentzen, and Peter Svenonius are reporting from Älvdalen. Piotr came a week ago, and the rest of us arrived on Thursday. The locals appear to be pleased with our open letter published in Mora Tidning a few days ago, in which we encouraged speakers to preserve their language by passing it on to children. We have been working intensively with informants born between 1925 and 1938, and have made much headway, thanks to their help and generosity.

Älvdalen, feltarbeid (oktober 2007)
Peter Svenonius and Kristine Bentzen interrogating Uls-Gerda on Övdalian syntax (Photo: Piotr Garbacz)
We have made great inroads into the structure of a language variety which we are tentatively calling ‘conservative’ or ‘traditional’ Övdalian or Älvdalian, in order to distinguish it from the ‘classic’ Övdalian described by Levander in 1909 and from the ‘modern’ Övdalian spoken by younger speakers. Features of conservative Övdalian that we have been studying include negative concord, subject pronoun doubling, verb movement in embedded clauses, certain restrictions on subject extraction, and a distinctive system of case. Conservative Övdalian shares with Modern Övdalian various other distinctive qualities, such as subject agreement, null subjects, and a three-way gender system.

One of many words that we learned on this trip was djyryl, which betokens tree sap that is too soft to chew, but which can be used as a sort of glue to hold sand on a stick for sharpening scythes.

We’re sharpening our pencils in preparation for the big upcoming Övdalian conference next summer. We have heard from Yair Sapir that we can expect to see a call for papers soon.

– Henrik, Piotr, Kristine, and Peter



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Det humanistiske fakultet, Universitetet i Tromsø, 9037 Tromsø TLF: 776 44240
Oppdatert av forskar Øystein A. Vangsnes den 03.03.2008 11:28
Ansvarlig redaktør: fakultetsdirektør Jørgen Fossland


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