Sverre Stausland

I am a Professor of Scandinavian Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Oslo.
I work on language change within the fields of phonology, historical linguistics, and sociolinguistics.

E-mail: sverre dot stausland at gmail dot com

My CV

(Norwegian CV)

News

Publications

(BibTeX file – biblatex file)

2024    Fyresegner fyre ordkløyving i norsk
            Norsk Årbok, 201–204. pdf link

2024    Tyngd på fyrsta stavingi i lånord
            (with Maria Evjen and Luca Lukas)
            Norsk Årbok, 89–102. pdf link

2024    Knud Knudsen og upphavet åt ordet ordskifte
            Norsk Årbok, 48–71. pdf link

2023    Oppklaringer om 1901-rettskrivningen.
            Norsk lingvistisk tidsskrift 41(1): 147–173. pdf link

2022    Villgang i vig og verja.
            Norsk Årbok, 69–78. pdf link

2021    The origin of the Proto-Indo-European nominal plural ending *-ōs.
            Historische Sprachforschung 134: 186–195. pdf link

2021    Review of Ivar Berg ‘Språket som vart norsk’.
            Norsk lingvistisk tidsskrift 39(1): 207–219. pdf link

2021    1901-rettskrivingi var den fyrsta samnorsk-umboti.
            Norsk Årbok, 111–118. pdf postprint link

2021    Grammaticalization in Somali and the development of morphological tone.
            (with Nina Hagen Kaldhol)
            Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 6(1): 587–599. pdf link

2020    1901-rettskrivinga, midlandsmakselen og riksstyremålet [The orthography of 1901, the Midland norm, and the language of the central administration].
            Arkiv för nordisk filologi 135: 95–111. pdf postprint link

2020    Tilsvar til Sandøy, Conzett, Kristoffersen og Nesse.
            Norsk lingvistisk tidsskrift 38(2): 271–274. pdf link

2020    Norske ord og norsk ordleiding: Slag og type.
            Norsk Årbok, 91–99. pdf postprint link

2019    Grunnleggjande spørsmål om språkendring og norsk språkhistorie [Fundamental questions of language change and the history of the Norwegian language].
            Norsk lingvistisk tidsskrift 37(1): 77–138. pdf postprint link

2016    Null subjects, preproprial articles, and the syntactic structure of Old Norwegian pronouns.
            Norsk lingvistisk tidsskrift 34(2): 183–217. pdf postprint link

2016    Neighborhood density in phonological alternations.
            BLS 36: 426–440. pdf link

2015    Språkendringar langs Oslofjorden [Language change along the Oslofjord].
            In Helge Sandøy (ed.) Talemål etter 1800.
            Oslo: Novus. 125–158. pdf link

2015    Dialect change in South-East Norway and the role of attitude in diffusion.
            Journal of Sociolinguistics 19(5): 612–642. pdf preprint link

2015    Vowel reduction in verbs in King Alfred’s Pastoral Care.
            In Dag Haug (ed.) Historical linguistics 2013.
            Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 19–40. pdf preprint link
                Data files: Data Analysis

2014    Review of Kristján Árnason ‘The phonology of Icelandic and Faroese’.
            Phonology 31(2): 329–337. pdf link

2013    The articulation of Norwegian retroflexes.
            Journal of Phonetics 41(1): 56–58. pdf link

2012    A diachronic account of phonological unnaturalness.
            Phonology 29(3): 505–531. pdf link

2012    Variation in Norwegian retroflexion.
            Nordic Journal of Linguistics 35(2): 197–212. pdf link
                Data files: Data Analysis

2012    Syncope of long in Old Norse nouns.
            In John Ole Askedal, Tom Schmidt, and Rolf Theil (eds.) Germansk filologi og norske ord.
            Oslo: Novus. 33–51. pdf link

2012    From perception to phonology: The emergence of perceptually motivated constraint rankings.
            Lingua 122(2): 125–143. pdf link
                Data files: Data Analysis Stimuli

2011    The origin of variation in Norwegian retroflexion.
            Ph.D. dissertation. Harvard University. pdf link

2011    The phonetics and phonologization of Verner’s law.
            In Thomas Krisch and Thomas Lindner (eds.) Indogermanistik und Linguistik im Dialog.
            Wiesbaden: Reichert. 232–241. pdf link

2009    Non-local binding in tenseless clauses.
            CLS 45(2): 103–116. pdf link

2009    The development of voiced labiovelars in Germanic.
            In Stephanie Jamison, Craig Melchert, and Brent Vine (eds.) Proceedings of the 20th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference.
            Bremen: Hempen. 197–211. pdf link

2008    Tense and binding in perception verb complements.
            Ph.D. generals paper. Harvard University. pdf

2007    The development of voiced labiovelars in Germanic.
            Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics 12: 15–26. pdf link

2006    Review of R. Nedoma ‘Kleine Grammatik des Altisländischen. 2. Auflage’.
            Die Sprache. pdf
            Accepted for publication, but never appeared in print.

2005    The historical development of Gothic aba and its n-stem anomalies.
            Historische Sprachforschung 118: 251–262. pdf link

2005    The Germanic (i)jō-stem declension. Origin and development.
            M.Phil. dissertation. University of Oslo. pdf doc link

2004    Review of R. Nedoma ‘Kleine Grammatik des Altisländischen’.
            North-Western Language Evolution 45: 119–123. pdf link

2003    Ljodsamhøvet i AM 315 f fol. [The vowel harmony in AM 315 f fol.].
            Arkiv för nordisk filologi 118: 47–75. pdf link

2003    Sanningsdyljing i målvitskapen.
            Målmannen 2(2): 2. pdf link

2002    Eit forsvar for norsken.
            (with Klaus Johan Myrvoll, Anders Olsen, and Kjetil Aasen)
            Syn og segn 108(1): 56–61. pdf link

2001    Ordsoga åt dei heimlege ordi.
            Review of H. Bjorvand & F. O. Lindeman ‘Våre arveord. Etymologisk ordbok’.
            Vestmannen 17(3): 6, 10, 14. pdf link

2001    Meir um j-fenging
            Høgnorsknytt 2001(1): 4–6. pdf link

2000    Målreinsking – ein uting?
            Høgnorsknytt 2000(4): 7–8. pdf link

2000    J-fenging.
            Høgnorsknytt 2000(3): 4–5. pdf link

Talks

The talks listed below are only those with links to pdf versions of the handout or slides.
Other talks have been superseded by newer talks or by publications.
For a full list of my presentations, please see my CV.
If you for some reason want the original handout or slides for talks not listed below, you can find them here.

May 2024   Merger of 2. and 3.sg.pres.ind. in Old Norse
                  Old English and Old Norse Symposium.
                  Oslo. pdf

May 2024   The source of variation in language
                  Microvariation and microchange in the Scandinavian languages.
                  University of Agder. pdf

Jan 2022   Monophthongization before the retroflex flap in Norwegian
                  (with Luca Lukas)
                  Phonology in the Nordic Countries (FiNo).
                  Aarhus University. pdf

Feb 2019   Does secondary stress exist in Norwegian?
                  Phonology in the Nordic Countries (FiNo).
                  University of Edinburgh. pdf

Nov 2017  Ganga og standa er ikkje avbrigde av og stå.
                  The 17th Meeting on the Norwegian Language (MONS).
                  Solstrand, Os. pdf

Mar 2015  Vowel harmony in an Old Norwegian manuscript
                  Vowel harmony in Old Norwegian.
                  University of Bergen. pdf

Nov 2013  Ivar Aasen og normgrunnlaget for landsmålet.
                  The 15th Meeting on the Norwegian Language (MONS).
                  University of Oslo. pdf

Jan 2013    Fagdidaktiske problem med én eller tre karakterer i norskfaget i studieforberedende retning i videregående skole.
                  Department of Cultural Studies and Languages.
                  University of Stavanger. pdf

Jan 2013    Grammatiske problem med å beskrive ordklassen adverb og setningsleddet adverbial i norsk.
                  Department of Cultural Studies and Languages.
                  University of Stavanger. pdf

Apr 2011   Rhyme acceptability determined by perceived similarity.
                  The 29th Weast Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL).
                  University of Arizona. pdf

Sep 2008   Finality constraints in Burmese – history and synchrony.
                  The 41st International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics (ICSTLL).
                  University of London. pdf

Dec 2007   Perceptual and articulatory notes on the origin of Germanic geminates.
                  GSAS Workshop in Historical Linguistics.
                  Harvard University. pdf

Nov 2006  The historical derivation of Gothic aba ‘husband’.
                  The 18th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference.
                  University of California, Los Angeles. pdf