Split Definiteness and Historical Language Documentation: Observations from Wangerooge Frisian

Abstract

This paper investigates the use of definite articles in Wangerooge Frisian (Ger-manic, northern Germany) and discusses a number of methodological problems in the analysis of definiteness in an extinct language variety. I show that Wangerooge Frisian exhibited a ‘split’ definiteness system with two formally and functionally distinct definite articles: the ‘weak’ article de/’t and the ‘strong’ arti-cle dan/djuu/dait/daa. Similar systems have been described for other languages of the world, including other Germanic varieties. However, the analysis of the Wangerooge Frisian system is complicated by a number of factors relating to the nature of the linguistic documentation, most of which was collected from an elder-ly speaker in the mid-19th century. The paper discusses five such issues, such as the lack of metadata about the elicitation situation and the inconsistent stress marking in much of the documentation. I then present a brief sketch of the defi-niteness system which takes these limitations into account.