Linguistic terminology in Swedish and Danish with comparison of Icelandic

Abstract

This article examines the acquisition of Swedish and Danish linguistic terminology. Onomasiological in nature, the data gathering for these two languages follows that carried out for Icelandic in an earlier study (Tarsi 2022a). The analytical model used builds on that employed in Tarsi (2022b), and the major innovation introduced here is a categorization of loanword typology based on intralexical chronology rather than on external factors (primary vs. secondary borrowings instead of necessity vs. prestige borrowings, respectively). The main findings of the article are: (1) Shared borrowings tend to be primary in Swedish but secondary in Danish; (2) the two languages show differing degrees of adaptation for loanwords, especially seen in the case of Latinate terminology, a phenomenon not found in Icelandic; (3) Swedish and Danish model their linguistic terminology to a great extent on the same languages, Latin and German, whereas Latin and Danish are the most prominent model languages for Icelandic; finally (4) in both languages there is a flourishing of native terminology in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, comparable in quantity and quality to that appearing in contemporary Icelandic data.