Norsk språk i seinmiddelalderen – endringer, periodisering og årsaker til endringene

Abstract

This dissertation starts with a small text sample of eight charters. These charters were issued in Bergen and date from between 1298 and 1495. The material was analysed with particular emphasis on changes in orthography, phonology, morphology and lexicon. Material from the period between 1450 and 1550 has already been thoroughly treated by Egil Pettersen (1975 and 1991), and my text sample and my analyses thus mainly provide a sketch of the developments from the last part of the Old Norwegian period until Pettersen’s text sample begins. From my analyses of the texts, it can be pointed out that it was not a clear link between vowel reduction and the decline of case inflection or the sporadic lack of case marking. Moreover, the vowel reduction is first carried out to a greater extent after the morphology already has been reduced or is missing. The material from Bergen also indicates a slightly different route for the loss of the case system than the one seen in the dative dialects, because in the Bergen material both the merging of nominative and accusative and much of the reduction of dative already happened during the 15th century. This also means that there have probably been slightly different paths towards the modern Norwegian language structure in the dialects, and perhaps there was generally a somewhat different path of development in the largest cities than in rest of the country.