The spread zones and contacts of medieval Finnic in the Northeastern Baltic Sea area

Implications for the rate of language change

Bibliographic Data

ID21227196
AuthorsRiho Grünthal (0000-0002-7648-5687, University of Helsinki, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume6
Issue2
Publication date2020-10-15
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Historical Sociolinguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2199-2894 • E-ISSN: 2199-2908
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/jhsl-2019-0029
OpenAlexW3093364884
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited40

In the contemporary northern Baltic Sea area, there are two states, Finland and Estonia, in which a western Uralic language has an official status. Several Finnic minority languages are or used to be spoken in the adjacent areas in the contact zone of Baltic, Germanic and Slavic languages. Historically, the north-eastern surroundings of the Gulf of Finland reflect a gradual spread of the language area during the past millennium and especially the late Middle Ages, while more southern areas in contemporary Estonia, and its eastern neighbourhood in Russia show longer continuity of language borders. The Finnic languages were used predominantly orally until very recently, whereas written language began to affect non-standard varieties more strongly only in the 19th and 20th centuries. The diversification of the Finnic languages in the Northeastern Baltic Sea area involves both integration and disintegration of mutually closely related varieties. This article focuses on i) the variability of changes and their correlation with emerging divergence between Finnic languages, ii) local language contacts during the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern age, and iii) the rate of linguistic change. The external powers affecting the diversity between the Finnic languages include the settling of early Swedish, German and Slavic centres among or in the vicinity of Finnic communities, the policies of medieval Catholic and Orthodox church, the extension of the trading networks of the Hanseatic League, wars and conflicts between dominant political powers in the east and west, as well as the gradual establishment of political borders. I will suggest that all these factors have played a role in the rate of both lexical and grammatical change

Ancient history · Archaeology · Baltic sea · Ethnology · Geography · German · Language contact · Linguistics · Middle Ages · Political science · Politics · Slavic languages · Classics · European Linguistics and Anthropology · History · Law · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Linguistics and language evolution · Geology · Oceanography

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