Språkhistorien och Svenska Akademiens språkarbete

• Summary The task imposed on the Swedish Academy is carefully regulated by the statutes laid down in 1786 by King Gustavus III. It is stated that »the foremost and most significant obligation of the Academy is to work upon the purity, strength and highness of the Swedish language» (§ 22), with a formulation characteristic of the period. The next paragraph (§ 23) contains the following addition: »Therefore, the Academy must also produce a Swedish dictionary and a grammar». In 1999, an up-to-date grammar in four volumes was published, followed in 2009 by a two-volume monolingual dictionary, both works elaborated by eminent scholars on behalf of the Swedish Academy. These achievements conclude a series of projects which had been carried out by the Academy over the years, in accordance with the founder’s instructions. It can now be argued that Swedish is one of the most thoroughly described and standardized languages in the world, and the Academy has played a central role in both processes. Since standardization is an important aspect of the recent development of the language, the Academy is consequently an integral part of the history of Swedish. However, a comprehensive account of the historical development of the Swedish language, from earliest time to the present day, is still sorely needed. Work on such a survey started towards the end of the 1990’s and is now approaching its completion. Apart from taking the latest scholarly findings into consideration and founding the description on modern theorical thinking, this Swedish language history is based on some fundamental preconditions. It is not addressing specialists exclusively, which means that it has to avoid far-reaching formalism. Furthermore, it is not constrained to describing a language system in change (»system» in the sense of possible structures of a phonological, morphological, syntactical nature etc.), as has often been the case in the Swedish tradition. Changes in the language usage as well as in the abstract system will be considered, and attention will be duly paid to the socio-cultural context of the language. Language history has made up a special scholarly genre in Scandinavian tradition since the Danish linguist Niels Matthias Petersen published the first survey of its kind in 1829–1830. He took all of the North Germanic languages into account, treating each national language separately, not as part of a whole and undivided language area, which could have been conceivable. Since the Swedish Academy is primarily a national concern, the main focus will be on the Swedish language in this treatment as well, but a general Nordic perspective will be adopted whenever well motivated. The most striking feature of this language history is probably the disposition and presentation of the matter. Texts of this kind usually have the form of structured narration and description, chronologically ordered, dealing with one period at a time, each period supposed to be held together by certain characteristics, which – at the same time – mark off the period in question from all the others. The relevance of such periods are denied in this survey. To emphasize this fact, centuries are the only structuring principle, and the history is turned upside down. Instead of taking a hypothical reconstructed language stage far back in history (or prehistory) as starting-point, the description takes off from the contemporary language, making its way through the historical background of Swedish, until the prehistoric lack of documentation draws the line. All discussions are amply illustrated with authentic texts. Since all observations should be based on written sources, the written language is the primary object of investigation. What little can be stated about spoken language is added with due cautiousness. This move can also be motivated by the fact that the work starts out with the standardized language of today, which is, to a great extent, dependent on the common written standard language rather than different spoken idiosyncratic varieties.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Studier av enskilda språk (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- Specific Languages (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

språkhistoria

språkhistorisk forskning

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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