1. science
2. social science
3. linguistics

Converging verbal phrases in related languages
A case study from Faro-Danish and Danish-German
language contact situations*
Karoline H. Kühl & Hjalmar P. Petersen
Hamburg, Research Centre on Multilingualism
The paper deals with Danish-Faroese and Danish-German language contact, in
particular Faro-Danish and Danish-German verb phrases that are constructed
under heavy influence of Faroese and German, respectively. The theoretical
framework is the Abstract Level Model (2002) as well as further developments
by Fredsted (2008) and Kühl (2008). The focus of the work described is on
the process and the results of convergence. It will be shown how semantic
information, syntactic information (predicate-argument-structure) and the
morphological realization patterns are transferred extensively from one language
to another, without this being evidenced by an insertional kind of code-switching.
1. Introduction
In this article we will concentrate on verb phrases (VPs) in bilingual speech, produced in Danish but heavily influenced by Faroese and German, respectively. The
language contact situations referred to are Danish as L2 on the Faroe Islands spoken
by Faroe Islanders with Faroese as their L1, and Danish as L2 in the Danish minority in Northern Germany spoken by speakers from the Danish minority with L1
German. Both situations involve intense language contact conditions, with highly
proficient speakers of Danish who use the language daily and extensively. In both
language contact situations there has been extensive historical language contact
between Danish and Faroese and between German and Danish.
Why are we concentrating on VPs? Verbs are pivotal links of inter-linkage
processing. By distributing theta-roles, main verbs are crucial for the syntax of
the sentence. They assign case and semantic roles, subcategorize for prepositional
*We would like to thank E. Fredsted and K. Braunmüller for comments on earlier versions of
this paper and A. MacDougall for proof-reading.
 Karoline H. Kühl & Hjalmar P. Petersen
phrases and are, in many languages, inflectional elements marked for tense, voice,
mode and possibly aspect and person as well. The crucial role played by the main
verb as a category in appointing grammatical and semantic roles implies a close
link between verbal syntax and meaning (Fredsted 2008: 954).
This article will concentrate on how VPs are influenced by the extensive (synchronic and diachronic) contact of related languages. We will compare our data
from the two different language contact areas mentioned above and apply them to
the Abstract Level Model (Myers-Scotton 2002), as well as to Fredsted’s hypotheses
concerning the possibilities of inter-language transfer within verb phrases (Fredsted
2008; K. Kühl 2008).
The paper is organized as follows: First, we provide an introduction section on
bilingualism and language contact on the Faroe Islands and in Northern Germany.
We then proceed to a section on methodology, which is followed by a section
with some theoretical terms. Finally, we present the data from Faro-Danish and
Danish-­German and finish with a discussion and a conclusion.
2. Danish in Northern Germany and on the Faroe Islands
The Danish minority in Northern Germany can be described as a historical,
regional community that became a national minority in its present host country
when the Duchy of Schleswig was divided in 1920 into two parts by a national
border line between Denmark and Germany. Despite being a historically substantiated minority, it is not (and never has been) a language minority in the traditional sense of the word, as the connection between nationality and preferred
language (usage) never played a decisive role in the multilingual and multinational region of Schleswig. Today, the Danish minority constitutes approximately
50,000 members.1 It has its own political representation, a complete educational
system (from Danish Kindergarten to Danish secondary schools) and various
institutions such as libraries, sports clubs and other organizations for recreational activities.
Danish is recognized as a minority language by the government of SchleswigHolstein (the State Government), the Bundesregierung (the Federal Government)
and the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention from 1995.
1. These numbers represent a rough calculation, as the government is not allowed to survey
members of minorities. The numbers mentioned have resulted from counting the members of
the minorities’ institutions (cf. J. Kühl 2004).
Converging verbal phrases in related languages 
Almost all members of the minority are bilingual in German and Danish,
although the degree of competence in both languages varies considerably. The spoken variety of Danish is not necessarily Standard Danish, but rather the so-called
‘Sydslesvigdansk’, a contact variety of Danish and German. ‘Sydslesvigdansk’ differs considerably from Standard Danish with regard to phonological, semantic
and syntactic features as well as the use of code-switching. It does not have its own
written norms, but can nevertheless be found in written form, both in informal
texts (e.g. blogs, chat or text messages produced by members of the Danish minority) and produced presumably non-intentionally (e.g. in ‘Flensborg Avis’, the daily
newspaper of the Danish minority). ‘Sydslesvigdansk’ is geographically restricted
and does not have any influence on the Danish language spoken in Denmark. The
label ‘Sydslesvigdansk’ implicates a condescending notion, implying that it is not
as good as Standard Danish. Although the features of ‘Sydslesvigdansk’ have been
established (K.M. Pedersen 2000; Braunmüller 1996; Fredsted 1986, 2001), the case
of VPs has not yet been accounted for (cf. however Fredsted 2008; K. Kühl 2008).
As it is difficult to decide or anticipate whether a certain feature is an (established) feature of ‘Sydslesvigdansk’ or instead produced ad hoc, we will label the
examples in this article produced in Danish and influenced of German not with
‘Sydslesvigdansk’, but rather with the neutral term German-Danish. The condescending label ‘Sydslesvigdansk’ shall also be avoided.
According to the Home Rule Act (Heimastýrislógin) from 1948, both Danish
and Faroese are official languages on the Faroe Islands. Typically, Faroese is spoken as L1 and Danish as L2. Again, this is actually a certain variety of Danish
called ‘Gøtudanskt’ (street-Danish, or Danish from the village Gøta). For the same
reasons mentioned above relating to ‘Sydslesvigdansk’, we will not use this label,
but rather the term Faro-Danish.
According to a report from a language committee on the Faroe Islands, 80% of
all teaching materials in upper and secondary schools are in a language other than
Faroese, primarily in Danish. The same report concluded that 20% of all ­lessons in
upper and secondary schools were given in Danish (Málmørk 2007: 45). A survey
from 1990 shows that 45% of the teachers in upper secondary schools were Danes,
49% were Faroese, and 5% foreigners who taught in Faroese. One cannot get along
on the Faroe Islands without Danish (Hansen et al. 2001). Illustrative of the situation is a woman from Eastern Europe. In an interview in the newspaper Dimmalætting (2007) she says that it is necessary to know Danish in order to manage
in the course of daily life on the islands.
These few figures give a rough idea of what the Faroese-Danish language
situation looks like. Both language situations are cases of stable individual bilingualism and language contact. The general attitude toward Danish in both the
 Karoline H. Kühl & Hjalmar P. Petersen
Faroese-Danish situation as well as in the German-Danish situation is a positive
one; see, for example Søndergaard (1988) and Jacobsen (2008).
Both Faroese and Danish are North Germanic languages. The former is of WestScandinavian, the latter of East-Scandinavian origin. They are syntactically quite
similar. Faroese has preserved more of the Old Norse lexicon than Danish, but has
also borrowed a large number of words from Danish. This makes the languages
similar with regard to vocabulary and even syntax, though they remain dissimilar
in terms of morphology and phonology. One example is that Faroese has three
genders (masc., fem. and neutr.), while Danish only has two, common gender and
neuter. This gives rise to very different morphological systems with different realizations of the controller genders on different targets (H.P. Petersen 2009).
German is a West-Germanic language. Danish has borrowed many words from
Low German, words that are still in use in today’s Danish (cf. Winge 2000). Nevertheless, there are noticeable differences with regard to syntax, morphology and
phonology. German has three genders (masc., fem. and neutr.), as does Faroese,
and four cases. In Danish there is no case marking of nouns except for the genitive; only personal pronouns are marked for case (oblique case and genitive).
In Danish, the possessive is often expressed by a fronted genitive (‘Lisa’s house’),
while in Modern Colloquial German it is constructed using a prepositional phrase
(‘the house of Lisa’). As far as verbs are concerned, Danish verbs are not marked
for person; other differences in the verb phrase will be shown in the course of the
following data analysis.
To sum up: We have two situations of extensive individual bilingualism and
extensive (historical) language contact, both concerning Germanic languages. In
these situations there are few limitations concerning the language competence of
the speakers or the intensity and scope of language contact. Thus, we are here
dealing with conditions which enable us to observe the far-reaching possibilities
of language contact.
3. Methodology
The German-Danish data corpus consists of 28 hours of oral language recorded
in different situations (interviews, free talk, group conversation, team work for
school-related tasks) produced by 45 speakers. The speakers were pupils in the
7th grade attending two different Danish minority schools. The recordings were
made by an interviewer who is a bilingual speaker of Standard Danish and Standard German. These data were collected as part of the project Bilingualer Sprachgebrauch von Jugendlichen, 2004–2006, at the University of Flensburg, funded by the
German Science Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft).
Converging verbal phrases in related languages 
The majority of the speakers had German as their dominant L1. This might be
surprising, but as a general rule the children attending the Danish minority schools
do not have Danish as their dominant language. They typically start acquiring the
minority language in Kindergarten. There are some exceptions (3 speakers were
Danish-German balanced bilinguals and 3 speakers displayed Danish as their
dominant L1). The pupils were proficient bilinguals by the time they reached the
7th grade.
The Faro-Danish data are part of a larger study on Faroese-Danish language
contact and bilingualism on the Faroe Islands. This study is currently being conducted at the Research Centre 538: Multilingualism at the University of Hamburg
(Sonderforschungsbereich Mehrsprachigkeit) and is also funded by the German
Science Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft).
The first part of the Danish data is based on 24 informal interviews conducted
by a Danish research assistant on the Faroe Islands during the summer of 2006.
She is a native speaker of Danish and she does not understand or speak any Faroese,
so the informants had to speak Danish with her. The length of each interview was
approximately 30 to 50 minutes, of which 30 minutes were transcribed in Praat.
The informants spoke about various topics such as children’s games, school and so
on. They came from two generations: 70+ and between 16–20. 7 women were from
the older generation, 6 from the younger and 5 men from the older and 6 from the
younger generation.
4. Theoretical approach
Convergence is defined by Myers-Scotton (2002) and (2006) as [bold face in original]:
“[…] speech by bilinguals that has all the surface-level forms from one language,
but with part of the abstract lexical structure that underlies the surface-level
patterns coming from another language (or languages).”
(Myers-Scotton 2006: 271)
This definition is not unproblematic, as it fails to mention the difference between
processes and results on the one hand and the convergence between languages
(level of language contact) and in individual bilingualism (speaker’s level) on the
other. In th is paper, we only use the term ‘convergence’ to refer to results of individual bilingualism.
The Abstract Level Model was outlined by Myers-Scotton and Jake in 1995
and was expanded upon by the same authors in 2000. It refers explicitly to Levelt’s
(1989) language production model. The Abstract Level Model makes it possible to
 Karoline H. Kühl & Hjalmar P. Petersen
discuss certain convergence phenomena and the nature of an abstract morphosyntactic frame “that structures bilingual clauses in types of contact phenomena other
than classic code-switching” (Myers-Scotton 2002: 19).
According to Levelt (1989), lexical items consist of two parts: on the one hand
the lemma as a concept and on the other hand the morpho-phonological form
or lexeme. The lexical entry’s meaning and syntax are represented in the lemma,
while morphological and phonological properties are represented in the lexeme.
The Abstract Level Model by Myers-Scotton postulates that all lemmas in the mental
lexicon consist of three levels of abstract lexical structure:
“[…] this model is based on premises about the nature of the mental lexicon. The
major premise underlying the Abstract Level model is that all lemmas in the mental
lexicon include three levels of abstract lexical structure. The three levels contain all
the grammatical information necessary for the surface realization of a lexical entry.
The levels refer to (i) lexical-conceptual structure, (ii) predicate-argument structure
and (iii) morphological realization patterns.”
(Myers-Scotton 2002: 19)
Myers-Scotton suggests that each of the mentioned structures can be transferred
to another language, implying an inter-linguistic recombination:
“The types of abstract structures found in bilingual data showing convergence
indicate that any of the three levels posited in the Abstract Level model for one
participating language can be copied to the other language in a bilingual clause.”
(Myers-Scotton 2002: 21)
Fredsted (2008: 961) pushes this hypothesis further and shows how the three levels
can be split in the lemma of one language and recombined with levels from the verbal lemma of another language so that the three levels become a composite of two
languages. The “splitting and recombining” (Fredsted 2008: 968) of the abstract but
still language-specific lemma structures leads to convergence in verbal clauses.
An example of this splitting and recombining is the Faro-Danish det kommer for sig, lit. it comes fore self = ‘it happens, it occurs’, which builds on two
Faroese verb frames: koma fyri, lit. comes fore = ‘happens, occurs’ and henda seg,
lit. happens self = ‘occur’. These are combined as komme for (Far. < kemur fyri) + seg
(Far. < hendir seg) in Faro-Danish, with the reflexive seg from henda seg ‘occur’, and
the verb + particle from koma fyri, lit.: comes fore = ‘happens, occur’.
Based on a combination of the 4-M-model2 and the Abstract Level Model,
Myers-Scotton postulates the following hypotheses describing the roles different
levels play in language contact:
2. The so-called 4-M-model was established by Myers-Scotton and Jake (1995 ff.): The aim of
the model is to provide universal predictions for possibilities and constraints in code-switching.
Converging verbal phrases in related languages 
“Of the three levels of abstract lexical structure, the level of lexical conceptual
structure in content morphemes is most susceptible to change through attrition/
convergence”
(Myers-Scotton 2002: 196).
“The level of morphological realization patterns is more likely to show
modification in attrition than the level of predicate-argument-structure”
(Myers-Scotton 2002: 200).
Following these hypotheses, the lexical-conceptual structures (semantics and pragmatics) are easily borrowed. According to Myers-Scotton’s predictions, morphological
realization (surface morphological elements and their order) and predicate-argument
structures (how the thematic roles are realized in the phrase structure) are least
likely to come from the Embedded Language (EL)3, while the lexical-conceptual
information is transferred rather easily across languages. She summarises this in
the following hierarchy: Predicate-argument structure < morphological realization patterns < lexical-conceptual structure (Myers-Scotton 2002: 231).
5. Converging VPs
Speaking in terms of Levelt’s production model and Myers-Scotton’s Abstract
Level Model, we see a clear tendency in our data towards the recombination of
verb lexemes from one language with the semantic and/or syntactic features of
the correspondent verb lemma from the other language. From a processing model’s point of view, interlingual transfer could be explained as follows: The lemma
of the Embedded Language is activated along with the corresponding syntactic
and/or semantic and/or morphological information, but the Matrix Languagelexeme is selected in the surface structure. Other research has mentioned this
possibility of interlingual transfer, cf. de Bot and Schreuder (1993), Green (1993)
and Myers-Scotton (2002), and see Fredsted (2008) and K. Kühl (2008).
The model categorizes morphemes on the basis of their formal morphosyntactic properties
(whether or not they are conceptually activated, whether they are thematic role assigners or
thematic role receivers and whether they refer to grammatical information outside the maximal
projection of head) and by their point of activation in the language production process.
3. In the following we use the terms Matrix Language (ML) and Embedded Language (EL) in
the sense of Myers-Scotton, according to whom the matrix language is the variety which structurally dominates the morphosyntactic frame of the linguistic unit (the clause). The structurally less dominant language, the embedded language, contributes largely by supplying lexical
elements that are integrated or inserted into the ML-frame (Myers-Scotton 2002: 15f.).
 Karoline H. Kühl & Hjalmar P. Petersen
The convergences that appear in the German-Danish- and Faro-Danish-VPs
can be divided into three different types:
a. Semantic convergences, where the semantic field of the main verb is extended
to the VP in the other language.
b. Syntactic VP-convergences, where the predicate-argument-structure of a
verb-lemma in language A is transferred to the corresponding verb-lexeme in
language B.
c. Convergences concerning the morphological realization pattern of VPs or
verbs.4
These three types of VP-convergences will be outlined in the following Sections
(5.1–5.3).
5.1 Semantic convergence in VPs
Consider Example (1a), where a speaker of the older generation tells how she
changed her school on the Faroe Islands. There were only two schools in Tórshavn,
and she went from one to the other, asking if ‘I may come to school there’. Note
that she uses kunne ‘may’, and not Standard Danish måtte ‘may’, with this use of
kunne in Faro-Danish corresponding to, as we will mention, the deontic use of
kunna ‘may’ in Faroese.
(1) a.
Faro-Danish:
Så gik
jeg bare ned til den anden skole,
then walked I(N) just down to the other school(A),
og spurgte, om jeg kunne
and asked, if I(N) am able to come in
komme i skole dér.
school(A) there
‘Then I just walked down to the other school, and asked if I was able to
attend school there.’
[intended meaning: ‘…and asked if I might attend school there’].
b. Standard Danish:
Så gik jeg bare ned til den anden skole og spurgte om jeg måtte komme
i skole der.
then walked I(N) just down to the other school(A), and asked, if I(N)
might attend school(A) there
4. German-Danish corpusFaro-Danish corpusSemantic VP-convergences123 tokens in 28 hours
of recording56 tokens in 54 hours of recordingsSyntactic VP-convergences210 tokens in 28 hours
of recording81 tokens in 54 hours of recordingsConvergence in the morphological realization
pattern 6 tokens in 28 hours of recording32 tokens in 54 hours of recordings.
Converging verbal phrases in related languages 
c.
Standard Faroese:
So fór eg bara oman í hin skúlan, og spurdi, um eg kundi sleppa í skúla har.
Epistemic possibility5 is expressed in Danish with kunne ‘can’ and with kunna ‘can’
in Faroese (Thráinsson & Vikner 1995: 55; Thráinsson et al. 2004: 306ff):
(2) a.
Faroese:
Tað kann vera satt.
b. Danish:
Det kan være sandt.
‘It may be true.’
Deontic modality6 is expressed in Danish with måtte ‘may’ and in Faroese with
kunna ‘may’:
(3) a.
Danish:
Hun må godt tage min bil.
she may well take my car
‘It’s fine that she takes my car’.
b. Faroese:
Hon kann gott fara við mínum bili.
she may well take with my
car
‘It’s fine that she takes my car.’
That is, the differences and partial overlap between the languages can be described as:
Danish:
Faroese:
Epistemic, possibility
Deontic, permission
kunne ‘can’
kunna ‘can’
måtte ‘may’
kunna ‘may’
The partial overlap is the reason why deontic permission is expressed with kunne
instead of måtte in (1a) from the Danish-Faroese data.7 This example shows how a
partial overlap in meaning leads to a semantic convergence based on a verb lemma.
5. ‘With epistemic modality speakers express their judgments about the factual status of the
proposition’ (Palmer 2001: 8).
6. ‘Deontic and dynamic modality refer to events that are not actualized, events that have
not taken place, but are merely potential, and may, therefore, be described as ‘event modality’
(Palmer 2001: 70).
7. We also oberseved a similar example in Faroese. In (1a), which is taken from a kind of a
underground Faroese homepage, the writer, after seeing the picture of a ‘babe’, says (1a) Handa
mátti gjarna kopiera fyri meg = ‘That one may make a copy for me’. He uses the Danish verb
 Karoline H. Kühl & Hjalmar P. Petersen
According to Myers-Scotton (2002: 196), such transfers represent convergence on the lexical-conceptual level (cf. Abstract Level Model, above). In language
combinations where the languages share a common ancestry and have been in
contact with one another for centuries, such as Danish with Faroese or German, a
semantic double assignment would not have any consequence in the case of synonyms. These cases of semantic convergence can only be described in terms of
a covert convergence, when items with inter-linguistic congruent semantic fields
are preferred in usage (cf. Thomason 2001: 289). However, when the verb lemma
under consideration is not entirely co-extensive, the transfer of the semantic field
from the language A verb lemma to the language B verb lexeme will result in an
obvious semantic convergence.8
We will illustrate such semantic convergence in VPs with two more examples,
one from the Faro-Danish data and another from the Danish-German data. The
Faroese verb at fara ‘to move; to go; to travel…’ denotes broadly a movement or
traveling towards a place. The Danish language uses more specific verbs to specify
the kind of movement (at gå, at rejse, at tage til, at køre, at cykle …). The following
examples show that although the speaker uses a specific Danish verb at gå ‘to walk’,
he does this with the same broad semantic field of Faroese at fara:
(4) a.
Faro-Danish:
Jeg ønsker at gå
til Kalifornien.
I(N) wish to walk(inf) to California(obl)
Lit.: I wish to walk to California.
[intended meaning: ‘I intend to go to California’].
b. Standard Faroese:
Eg ynski at fara
til Kalifornia.
I(N) wish to go(inf) to California(A)
‘I intend to go to California.’
c.
Standard Danish:
Jeg ønsker at tage til/rejse
til Kalifornien.
I(N) want to take to(inf)/travel(inf) California(obl)
‘IˉintendˉtoˉgoˉtoˉCalifornia.’
måtte in a Faroese form mátti, but in a deontic sense, meaning that the speaker refers to an
event that has not yet taken place, as the ‘babe’ has not copied anything at all for the writer.
8. The difference between a semantic convergence and a loan translation lies in the overlap
of the semantic fields of the lemmas (not only verb lemmas). If there is an overlap, however
small, the semantic field can be enlarged according the other language; this is considered
a semantic convergence. If overlap does not exist between the source word and the newly
created word (either displaying a totally different meaning or being a non-existing word in
the target language), this is considered a loan translation.
Converging verbal phrases in related languages 
Although the semantic fields of Faroese at fara and Danish at gå overlap in terms of
the movement, the phenomenon observed here is clearly a case of the broadening of
the semantic field of a Danish verb lexeme according to the Faroese verb lemma.
The same thing happens in the Danish-German data with the German verb
fahren. Fahren is a verb with a very broad semantic extension that is used for almost
all kinds of locomotion and movement/traveling towards a place (not unlike the
English ‘to go to’). It can additionally be constructed together with a substantive
specifying the vehicle used (Fahhrad fahren = ‘to go by bike’, Schiff fahren = ‘to go by
ship…’). As mentioned above, Danish disposes of locomotion verbs that are more
specific than fahren, as they include information about the vehicle used (at cykle = ‘to
go by bike’, at sejle = ‘to sail, …’). However, the Danish verb at køre (at køre = ‘to drive’;
a partial translation equivalent of German fahren) is employed in the data with the
broad semantic field and all of the semantic extensions of fahren (14 tokens):
(5) a.
German-Danish:
Jeg skal først køre
med cykel
til busstoppestedet.
I(N) must first drive(inf) by bike(obl) to bus-stop-the(obl)
‘Before [that], I have to drive/go by bike to the bus stop.’
[intended meaning: ‘Before [that], I have to bike to the bus stop’].
b. Standard Danish:
Jeg skal først cykle
til busstoppestedet.
I(N) must first bike(inf) to bus-stop-the(obl)
‘Before that, I have to bike to the bus stop.’
c.
Standard German:
Ich muss erst mit dem Fahrrad zur Bushaltestelle
fahren.
I(N) must first with the bike(D) to bus stop-the(A) go(inf)
‘Before that, I have to bike to the bus stop.’
The three Examples (1a), (4a) and (5a) show how the semantic fields of VPs merge,
resulting in semantic convergence.
5.2 Syntactic convergence in VPs
Syntactic convergence implies a Danish VP, but with the heavy influence of an
underlying language – Faroese or German – on the construction of the VP, as in (6)
(6) German-Danish:
Jeg tror, vi
har hele tiden
slet ikke
I(N) think we(N) have whole time-the at all not
taget
det op?
lifted(PPP) it up(PRT)
‘Iˉthinkˉduringˉtheˉwholeˉtimeˉweˉdidn’tˉliftˉitˉup.’
[intended meaning: ‘I don’t think we recorded it the whole time.’]
 Karoline H. Kühl & Hjalmar P. Petersen
This VP is formed through the activation of the predicate-argument-structure
(verbal syntax) of language A (German), while the speaker speaks language B
(Danish), implying that the lexical-conceptual information and the morphological realization pattern are realized in this language, language B. This is a “splitting
and recombining” (Fredsted 2008: 968) of the predicate-argument-structure of a
language A-lemma (German or Faroese) with a language B-lexeme (Danish). This
can be shown in the following model:
predicate-argument-structure
German/Faroese
lexical-conceptual information
Danish
morphological realization
The example in (6) shows how a syntactic VP convergence can be caused by
the transfer of rules for the separation of verbs and particles (satellites): In Danish,
inseparable compound verbs developed to a great extent as transfers from German
(and Latin) as a result of language contact of varying intensity beginning around
1100 (Diderichsen 1971; Winge 2000); inseparable compound verbs rarely occur
in Old Norse and Old Danish.
In many cases, the VPs that were originally adopted from German or Latin
display a more abstract meaning (Diderichsen 1971: 236f.). As a consequence, the
same verb can be found in today’s Danish as an inseparable compound verb with
a more abstract meaning on the one hand and as a separable compound verb with
a tangible meaning on the other (for example at opstå = “to rise from the dead” vs.
at stå op = “to rise, to get up”).
We discuss (6) in more detail below. The example in (7a) shows how the rules
for the separation of verb and particle can be transferred, creating a syntactic
VP convergence. Note that Danish has an inseparable compound verb optage ‘to
record’ (7b), while German has a separable compound verb (7c).
(7) a.
German-Danish:
Jeg tror, vi
har hele tiden
slet ikke
I(N) think we(N) have whole time-the(obl) at all not
taget
det op?
lifted(PPP) it up(PRT)
‘I think during the whole time we didn’t lift it up.’
[intended meaning: ‘I don’t think we recorded it the whole time’].
Converging verbal phrases in related languages 
b. Standard Danish:
Jeg tror vi
hele tiden
slet ikke
I(N) think we(N) whole time(obl) at all not
har optaget
det.
have recorded(SUP) it(obl)
‘I think we didn’t record it.’
c.
Standard German:
Ich glaube, wir
nehmen es
die ganze Zeit
nicht auf.
I(N) think we(N) record it(A) the whole time(A) not on(PRT)
‘I think during the whole time we didn’t record it.’
It becomes clear that a compound in Danish is required instead of a verb + particle
construction, with verb + particle resulting from the influence of German (aufnehmen = ‘to record’, ich nehme etwas auf = ‘I record something’). The separation of particle and verb (a change in the predicate-argument-structure) results in a change in
the semantic-syntactic information: The verb at tage ‘to take’ requires an Agent and a
Patient. Direction is added to the thematic grid when combined with the particle op
‘up’, e.g. tage noget op fra gulvet ‘to lift something up from the floor’. The compound
verb optage ‘record’ requires an Agent, a Patient and an (implicite) Instrument; optage
med en båndoptager ‘record with a cassette-recorder’, for example. The change from
compound to verb + particle is not merely a change in the morphological realization
pattern, but also a change in the predicate-argument-structure, as it affects the syntactic order. In addition, in (7a) it entails a complete change of meaning.
Many compound verbs in Faroese are borrowed from Danish. As this is the
case, compound and simple verbs co-occur in colloquial speech e.g.: afturhalda
‘hold back’ (lit.: after + hold) and halda aftur ‘hold back’ (lit.: hold after) (Petersen &
Adams 2008; Gullbein 2006).
(8a) offers an illustrative example in which the Danish VP give ud ‘to distribute’, e.g. give penge ud ‘to spend money’, is modeled on the Faroese verb + particle
construction geva út ‘to publish’. The Danish target, however, is the compound
udgive ‘to publish’:
(8) a.
Faro-Danish:
Han har givet
så meget ud.
He(N) has given(SUP) so much out(PRT)
‘He has spent a lot (of money)’.
[intended meaning: ‘He has published a lot’].
b. Standard Faroese:
Hann hevur givið
so nógv út.
He(N) has given(SUP) so much out(PRT)
‘He has published a lot.’
 Karoline H. Kühl & Hjalmar P. Petersen
c.
Standard Danish:
Han har udgivet
så meget.
He(N) has outgiven(SUP) so much
‘He has published a lot.’
Another kind of syntactic convergence based on VPs is the transfer of reflexivity.
The following example shows how the reflexivity of the German reflexive verblemma sich drehen ‘to spin around’ is transferred to its Danish non-reflexive translation equivalent at dreje rundt ‘to rotate’:9
(9) a.
German-Danish:
…og så drejede de
sig
i luften.
…and then turned they(N) themselves(obl) in air-the(obl)
‘…and then they turned themselves in the air’.
[intended meaning: ‘…and then they rotated in the air’].
b. Standard Danish:
…og så drejede de
rundt i luften.
…and then rotated they(N) round in air-the(obl)
‘…and then they rotated in the air’.
c.
Standard German:
…und dann drehten sie
sich
in der Luft.
…and then turned they(N) themselves(A) in the air-the(D).
‘…and then they rotated in the air’.
We find similar examples in Faro-Danish in the following complex Example (10),
where two Faroese constructions are mixed with a Danish compound verb:
(10) a.
Faro-Danish:
Det kommer
for sig.
it(N) comes-3.p.sg. fore SELF
‘It happens’.
b. Standard Danish:
Det forekommer.
it(N) fore-comes(3.p.sg)
‘It happens’.
c.
Standard Faroese:
Tað kemur
fyri.
it(N) comes-3.p.sg. fore
‘It happens’.
9. In fact, dreje sig also exists in Danish, meaning someone turning him/herself around
actively and autonomously, implying that Agens and Patiens are the same person. Dreje rundt
(rotate) does not differentiate between the roles of Agens and Patient.
Converging verbal phrases in related languages 
d. Standard Faroese:
Tað hendir seg.
it(N) happens self(A)
‘It happens’.
(10a) builds on the Faroese verb + particle construction kemur fyri (lit. comes
fore) ‘happens, occurs’ as shown in (10c) instead of the Danish compound verb
(10b). The reflexive sig in (10a) is adopted from another Faroese verb with a similar semantic field, henda seg [lit. happens self] ‘happen, occur’ (10d).10
Convergence in word order can be analysed as another kind of syntactic
­convergence: The rules for placing the words in a syntactic string in main clauses in
Danish and German are determined by the main verb. The verbal syntax in ­Danish
and German is characterized by two different mirror-inverted principles. The
complements of the V are placed left to right in Danish according to their semantic
and syntactic closeness to the main verb. In German, this positional principle is
mirror-inverted: the complements under the head V are placed right to left according to their semantic and syntactic closeness to the main verb. These positional
principles are part of the subcategorizations of the category main verb (Fredsted
1986). This means that the verbal building process and syntactic information are
not connected with a specific verb lemma, but rather with the language specific
syntactic information of the category main verb as such. If the speaker activates a
certain lemma, the specific syntactic information encoded in this lemma will activate the relevant syntactic structure. This justifies the categorization of the change
in word order as a convergence based on a verb (Fredsted 1986; 2008).
10. This is a kind of transfer that goes both ways, as the following Faroese example shows:
The VP is constructed according to the Danish compound verb at foregå ‘to occur’ and not according to the corresponding Faroese verb, which would be the reflexive verb + particle ganga
fyri seg [lit.: go fore SELF] = ‘to occur’. Nevertheless, the reflexive is maintained:
Faroese:
Alt
fyrigekk seg
á donskum.
all(N) happened SELF(A) on Danish(D)
‘Everything was in Danish’.
Standard Danish:
Alt
foregik
på dansk.
all(N) happened on Danish(obl)
‘Everything was in Danish.’
Standard Faroese:
Alt
gekk fyri seg
á donskum.
All(N) went for SELF(A) on Danish(D)
‘Everything was in Danish.’
 Karoline H. Kühl & Hjalmar P. Petersen
Analyzed as such, word order change can – in terms of the 4-M-model
(Myers-Scotton 2002: 245) – be seen as an early system morpheme, when a content morpheme exists as the head of the structure. According to the 4-M-model,
a content morpheme is conceptually activated and acts as a thematic role assigner
(e.g. a verb, a noun or an adjective) or reciever (e.g. a noun or a preposition). An
early system morpheme is conceptually activated, but not a thematic role assigner
or reciever. It is shaped by the underlying content morpheme and reinforces the
realisation of the semantic-pragmatic features of the content morpheme. ‘Early’
refers to the point of activation in the mental lexicon. According to predictions
made by the 4-M-Model (Myers-Scotton & Jake 1995, 2000), the activation as a
concept of both content and early system morpheme entails that they can be transferred easily from one language to another, in the sense that they may come from
the Matrix Language or the Embedded Language.
The following example from the Danish-German data shows how the main verb
lide ‘like’ and the auxiliary kan ‘can’ are placed according to German word order
rules (11a, cf. 11c), and not according to Standard Danish word order (cf. 11b).
(11) a.
German-Danish:
Jeg kan alle
lide.
I(N) can all(obl) like(1sg)
‘I like [them] all .’
b. Standard Danish:
Jeg kan lide
alle.
I(N) can like(1sg) all(A)
‘I like all.’
c.
Standard German:
Ich kann alle gut leiden.
I(N) can all(A) like(1sg)
‘I like all.’
This is just one example of many in which the word order in Danish follows the
German word order.
We find changes in the word order in Faro-Danish as well: In subordinate
clauses, Standard Danish uses the construction adverb + verb. In Icelandic (Insular Scandinavian), however, the string seen after bridge- and non-bridge verbs is
verb + adverb. Faroese allows both the adverb + verb and verb + adverb strings
after bridge verbs, as well as after non-bridge verbs (see H.P. Petersen (2000);
Thráinsson (2004) and Thráinsson et al. (2004: 438 ff)).
Given the distribution of verb + adverb in Faroese subordinate clauses, the
sentence below is not unexpected. The Faro-Danish sentence in (12a) with the
string vil ikke ‘will not’ is based on Faroese word order (12b), not on Standard
Converging verbal phrases in related languages 
Danish word order (12c). The informant speaks about an American preacher and
remarks that he is:
(12) a.
Faro-Danish:
En meget interessant mand, som mange mennesker vil ikke
a very interesting man(N) who many people(N) will not
høre om.
hear about
‘A very interesting man, who many people do not want to hear about.’
b. Standard Faroese:
Ein ógviliga áhugaverdur maður, sum nógv fólk
vilja ikki
a very
interesting man(N) who many people(N) will not
hoyra um.
hear about
‘A very interesting man, who many people do not want to hear about’.
c.
Standard Danaish:
En meget interessant mand, som mange mennesker ikke vil
a very interesting man(N) who many people(N) will not
høre om.
hear about
‘A very interesting man, who many people do not want to hear about’.
The adoption of the syntactic property ‘main verb’ from a language A-lemma to a language B-lexeme is another cause of syntactic convergences in VPs. This happens quite
often in the Danish-German data: a Danish verb lexeme takes over the role of a main
verb, as the corresponding German verb would have done in the same construction.
The following example shows a case in which the Danish modal verb at ville
‘to want’ takes over the features of the corresponding German main verb wollen ‘to
want’ in the correspondening German verbal phrase. The necessary Danish main
verb have ‘to have’ is thereby deleted:
(13) a.
German-Danish:
…det
ville Aase
sådan.
…it(obl) want Aase(N) such
‘Aase wanted it so.’
[intended meaning: ‘…Aase wanted it like that’].
b. Standard Danish:
…sådan ville
Aase
have det.
…such wanted Aase(N) it(obl)
‘…Aase wanted it like that.’
 Karoline H. Kühl & Hjalmar P. Petersen
c.
Standard German:
…das wollte Aase
so.
…it(A) wanted Aase(N) such
‘Aase wanted it like that.’
This kind of syntactic convergence becomes visible through the lack of the infinite verb. Another kind of syntactic convergence arises from the fact that German
VPs defining the theta-roles by case often correspond with Danish VPs selecting a
prepositional phrase. If this syntactic feature, i.e. case vs. a PP, is in fact transferred
interlingually, this will cause crucial changes in the VP-construction.
In the following Example (14), the predicate-argument-structure of the
­German verb öffnen ‘to open’ (selecting case, cf. (14b) is transferred to the corresponding Danish verb åbne ‘to open’, which requires a preposition, see (14a). This
syntactic transfer leads to an important change in meaning:
(14) a.
German-Danish:
Ja, Pia
åbner ham.
yes, Pia(N) opens him(obl)
‘Pia opens him up’
[intended meaning: ‘Yes, Pia opens for him].’
b. Standard Danish:
Ja, Pia
åbner døren
for ham.
yes, Pia(N) opens door-the(obl) for him(obl)
‘Yes, Pia opens the door for him.’
c.
Standard German:
Pia
öffnet ihm
(die Tür).
Pia(N) öffnet him(D) (the door(A))
‘Pia opens up (the door) for him’.
The speaker’s target meaning in (14) was ‘Pia opens up the door for him’ (cf. (14b)).
This can be realized in German with the verb öffnen ‘to open’, which selects two
objects: an NP-dative/benefactive (ihm ‘him’) and a NP-accusative/affected (die
Tür ‘the door’) (14c).
Although Danish personal pronouns are marked for oblique and non-oblique
case, this distinction only marks non-subject and subject. This implies that this
case distinction as such cannot define the benefactive and affected object. This
distinction must be realized in a prepositional phrase (as shown in (14b). It is quite
obvious that the speaker in (14a) tries to maintain the German construction while
speaking Danish, making the most of the Danish case possibilities. The syntactic
transfer results in an involuntary but crucial change in meaning.
Converging verbal phrases in related languages 
In Danish, an adverb of direction (hen ‘to’, op ‘up’, ned ‘down’, langs ‘alongside’…) adds a telic meaning to a verb as seen in de går hen til huset ‘they walk over
to the house’. A telic reading means that the action has a beginning and an end, as
opposed to an atelic reading as in de går ‘they walk’. In German, for example, telicity is expressed by preposition + case, cf. the following sentences:
(15) German preposition + accusative:
Sie
liefen auf das Fußballfeld.
they(N) ran on footballfield-the(A)
‘They ran to the football field.’
(16) German preposition + dative:
Sie
liefen auf dem Fußballfeld.
they(N) ran on the football-field(D)
‘They were running on the football field.’
The difference in the realization of telicity in Danish (preposition + adverb of direction) and German (preposition + case) results in syntactic convergences that are
meant to express a telic reading. There are many examples in the Danish-­German
data in which the Danish VP is constructed without the directional adverb, following the German construction. Such an example is shown in (17a):
(17) a.
German-Danish:
…så kom politiet,
og de
løb på taget.
…then came police-the(N), and they(N) run on roof-the(obl).
‘…then the police came, and they were running on the roof.’
[intended meaning: ‘…then the police came, and they ran up
onto the roof ’].
b. Standard Danish:
…så kom politiet
og de
løb op på taget.
…then came police-the(N), and they(N) ran up on roof-the(obl)
‘…then the police came and they ran up onto the roof ’.
c.
Standard German:
…dann kam die Polizei
und sie
liefen auf dem Dach.
…then came the police(N) and they(N) ran on the roof(D)
‘…then the police came, and they ran on the roof ’.
Note again the involuntary change of meaning that is caused by syntactic convergence. Another kind of verbal convergence stems from the differences between
supine attraction in Faroese and Danish. Faroese, Norwegian and Swedish dialects
in Jämtland exhibit supine attraction or supine spreading (Sandøy 2001: 140) in
which an infinitive changes to a supine as the result of the supine in the preceding
 Karoline H. Kühl & Hjalmar P. Petersen
main verb, as seen in (18a). Supine attraction is a phenomenon that is unknown
in Standard Danish. The way in which this causes changes in VPs is shown in the
following example: The target in (18a) is Standard Danish at arbejde and not at
arbejdet ‘to work’, which is impossible in Standard Danish:
(18) a.
Faro-Danish example:
Jeg har prøvet
at arbejdet
på en café.
I(N) have tried(SUP) to work(SUP) on a café(D)
‘I have tried to work at a café.’
b. Standard Faroese:
Eg havi prøvað
at arbeitt
á einari kafé.
I(N) have tried(SUP) to work(SUP) on a
café(D)
‘I have tried to work on a café.’
c.
Standard Danish:
Jeg har prøvet
at arbejde på en kafe.
I(N) have tried(SUP) to work(inf) on a café(obl)
‘‘I have tried to work on a café.’
To sum up: The examples above show the numerous ways in which different syntactic features in VPs can be transferred inter-linguistically, resulting in a combination
of the predicate-argument-structure from language A and the lexical-conceptual
structure and the morphological realization pattern from language B.
5.3 Convergence in the morphological realization patterns of VPs
In the Faro-Danish data we find different cases of convergence in the morphological
realization pattern of verb phrases: One such case concerns the past participle.
The past participle in Standard Danish is expressed with -t, as in kommet ‘arrived’
(Christensen & Widell 2001: 85). Faroese exhibits different past participle endings depending on the verb class (Petersen & Adams 2008; Thráinsson et al. 2004;
H.P. Petersen 2001). Ignoring the details, we shall merely mention that the past
participle of strong verbs is -in, as in komin ‘arrived’, and that it is this suffix that
is activated in (19).
An example with a convergence in the morphological realization pattern of the
past participle is presented below. In the Faro-Danish Example (19), the speaker
uses the suffix -en and transfers it to Danish.
(19) a.
Faro-Danish example:
…som jeg var kommen
at kende.
which I(N) was come (PPP) to know
‘which I had learned to know.’
Converging verbal phrases in related languages 
b. Standard Faroese:
…sum eg var komin
at kenna.
which I(N) was come(PPP) to know(inf)
‘which I had learned to know’.
c.
Standard Danish:
...som jeg var kommet
til
at kende.
which I(N) was come (PPP) to(PRT) to know(inf)
‘which I had learned to know’.
The Faro-Danish verbs that are presented in the table below all have a “wrong” past
tense. Three of the verbs are strong verbs in Standard Danish: forstod ‘understood’,
past tense of at forstå ‘to understand’; gad ‘liked (to)’, past tense of at gide ‘to like
(to)’; and frøs ‘froze’, past tense of at fryse ‘to freeze’. It should be noted that these
forms show that the past tense suffix -ede is more productive in the interlanguage
(FD) than in Danish and Faroese.
Far.-Dan.
bestemmede
gadede
forståede
frysede
kaldede
visede
Dan.
Far.
bestemte
bestemmaðu
‘decided’
gad
forstod
forstóðu
‘understood’
frøs
frystu
‘froze’
kaldte
kallaðu
‘called’
viste
vístu
‘showed’
‘liked to’
The explanation of the phenomenon observed in the example above is relatively straight-forward, and it is one based on analogical leveling: Two suffixes exist
in the past tense in the weak declination in Faroese verb inflection, sg./pl. -aði/-aðu,
and -ti/tu (allomorphs: -di/-du; -ddi/ddu; Petersen 2001). Of these, the -aði/-aðu
suffixes of the first inflection of the weak verbs are productive, as exhibited by loanwords and historical changes; loanwords automatically enter this class and a strong
verb such as bjóða ‘to invite’ and past tense beyð ‘invited’ changes the past tense to
bjóðaði ‘invited’ instead of beyð ‘invited’. The ending corresponds synchronically
(and mostly also historically) with -ede in Danish and the Old Norse ō-verbs. As the
suffix is productive, the past tense of the verb-inflections above is not unexpected.
Note that the endings have the Danish form -ede, not the Faroese [-aji] or [-avu].
According to the 4-M model, one should not expect to find an underlying
cross-linguistic influence on the morphological realization pattern of verbs. Tense
(and agreement) are considered outsider system morphemes and should not be
among the prime candidates to be transferred in a language contact situation.
6. Discussion and conclusion
We have compared bilingual VPs from two different but nevertheless comparable
language contact situations, where the common features of the two situations and
 Karoline H. Kühl & Hjalmar P. Petersen
consequently the data pose an interesting juxtaposition: Both the situation on the
Faroese Islands and in Northern Germany build upon widespread and extensive
individual bilingualism as well as extensive language contact in all domains of
daily life, the same holding true for the historical language contact. The languages
exposed to this synchronic as well as diachronic language contact – Danish with
Faroese and German – are in both cases Germanic languages. The situations
described show only few limitations concerning the language competence of the
speakers or the intensity and scope of language contact. These are conditions which
enable us to observe the far-reaching possibilities of language contact through a
comparative analysis of data from two different language contact situations.
Through the application of a common analytical approach to both data sets
we were able to show that VPs are highly susceptible to convergence in both cases.
While Myers-Scotton (2002: 231) predicts that the predicate-argument-structure
and the morphological realization pattern should be influenced at least by ­language
contact, this is not what we observe in our data, where both the morphological
realization patterns as well as the predicate-argument-structure are transferred
inter-linguistically.
In contrast, the comparison of the two different language contact situations confirms the results of Fredsted (2008) and K. Kühl (2008) showing how syntactic features
of verb phrases can be activated in another language without being obviously – in
the sense of a language shift – connected to a verbal lexeme from the first language. This suggests the possibility of a splitting and recombining of the abstract
features of VPs (according to the Abstract Level model). Obviously, VP-features
such as predicate-argument-structure and lexical-conceptual information can be
transferred extensively across languages and recombined with verb lexemes from
another language. The transfer of morphological realization patterns in Faro-Danish
shows that it is indeed possible for tense (and agreement) to be transferred, despite
other predicions. Whether the systematic takeover which we saw in the Faro-Danish
data – compared to the rather random takeover in the German-Danish data – is due
to factors on the speakers’ level (e.g. a certain tradition developed by the Faroese
speakers) or to factors on the level of language contact (structural equivalence
between Faroese and Danish) remains to be seen.
These results show how the grammatical system is definitely more susceptible
to change than previously assumed. Further, our results do not confirm the general
assumption that while changes in the semantic field are quite frequent, changes in
the grammar of a language are strongly resisted. It must be mentioned, however,
that the convergences in the grammatical system do not imply mixed VP-features
(for instance, a mixed predicate-argument-structure). The convergences shown
here are always composites of two languages, e.g. predicate-argument-structures
of language A combined with the lexical-conceptual information of language B.
Converging verbal phrases in related languages 
The results also fail to comply with the traditional concept of Matrix Language and Embedded Language (terms referring to Myers-Scottons MLF-model,
cf. Footnote 3), indicating a clear distribution of roles set up by a dominant and a
subordinating variety. In the examples shown, the interlingual transfer of the VP
features does not seem to entail an actual obvious language shifts. This has certain
implications for understanding the roles of the Matrix Language and the Embedded Language. Regarding the syntactic VP-convergences shown above, it seems
that the language contributing to the phrase with the predicate-argument-structure should be considered the dominant language, as it determines the number
and form of complements as well as the word order (Myers-Scotton, p.c., accepts
this view). However, this means that the Matrix Language in these phrases is completely invisible on the surface, as we find, for example, with det kommer for sig ‘it
happens’ (see example 10a), with two Faroese verb frames but with Faro-Danish
pronunciation.
This point of view represents a considerable departure from traditional attempts
to determine the dominant language. It also points towards a new dimension in
determining the roles of the languages participating in language contact.
Whether these kinds of language contact phenomena are due to the special features of the two situations described – relatedness of languages, extensive language
contact, early sequential and highly competent bilingual speakers – or whether
they can also be found under different circumstances remains to be seen.
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