Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/475

 Reviews and Notes 471 SYNTAXEN I TROMSO BYMAAL. ZN KORT OVER- SIGT AV RAGNVALD IVERSEN. KRISTIANIA, 1918. Pp. 102. Fflgeskrift til Maal og Minne. We have before had a study of the dialect of Christiania by Amund B. Larsen in 1907, and one of Bergen by Amund B. Larsen and Gerhard Stoltz in 1911-12. In the present study we now have one also for Troms0, which, however, differs in its scope from the earlier ones. That on the dialect of the capital deals exclusively with the phonology and the forms ; and that on Bergenese Norwegian also emphasizes these, to which is added here considerable material on the vocabulary, and eight pages of notes on syntactical matters. As the title of the work before us shows, it is an account of the syntax of the dialect in question. The work is, therefore, doubly welcome. In the first place, there has been very little published before in the way of investigations of North Norwegian speech; in the second place, there has been practically nothing done in the field of syntax of the dialects of any part of Norway and indeed hardly anything for Scandinavian dialects in general. Mr. Iversen's account is brief to be sure, and often quite sketchy, but it is in every way a valuable one, and we are very grateful to the author and the publisher for its appearance. In his preface the author informs us that he was born and reared in Troms0, and that he spoke Troms0 dialect in pure form until he was grown up. It is, therefore, the work of one who has intimate knowledge of the matter he is dealing with, and it has clearly been a work of pleasure. "Slik som dialekten her er gjengit, slik klang den i mine guttedager deroppe i den livlige og vakre lille nordlandsbyen, slik 10d den i smau og smott, paa bryggene og i bordstuene, fra Moljen til Magrete- bakken, fra s0r paa Stranda til nord i Bogta." Naturally in so small a town (about 6,000 people now), dialectal speech is purer and more uniform than in larger cities. It stands closer to the rural speech of the country around, it is more intimately a part of the dialectal unit of the region, than e.g., that of Bergen. But this is true here only within certain limits; the author shows how both Riksmaal and Bergen Norwegian have often influ- enced it (Bergen possibly in several instances not so attributed by the author). And it presents many interesting features, wherin it differs both from other city dialects and rural speech in general. We have, as yet, no investigation of the dialect of Trondhjem. I hope that some Christiania University student from Trondhjem will soon undertake this task. Mr. Iverson nowhere mentions Trondhjem as having had any influence upon the syntax of Troms0 Norwegian. Has not the larger city of the North set some linguistic fashions among the people of the much smaller Troms0? In his presentation the author aims