Phrasal and Compound Verbs in Early North Germanic

Abstract

One of the characteristic features of Old Norse is the loss of unstressed preverbs and hence a great reduction in the number of compound verbs inherited from Proto-Germanic. Yet interpretations that assume the existence of verb-particle con­structions are often invoked by runologists suggesting the development of a new type of verbal formation in early North Germanic. The appearance of both phrasal and compound verbs in early runic inscriptions may represent evi­dence of a language where both object-verb and verb-object phenomena were common. This paper reassesses the early runic evidence for phrasal and com­pound verbs, particularly in light of a 1999 find from the Nydam bog and recent syntactic scholarship.