A new doctoral thesis from the University of Gothenburg shows that a unique grammatical construction found in Estonia-Swedish dialects contradicts established assumptions about what is possible in Germanic languages.
During the Middle Ages, people migrated from Sweden’s east coast to Estonia. There, they developed their own Swedish dialects, which over the centuries were shaped through close contact with Estonian and relative isolation from standard Swedish. The result was Estonia-Swedish—a group of dialects now so distinctive that they are difficult for present-day Swedish speakers to understand.
The thesis examines an unusual form of adjective inflection in these dialects. While standard Swedish uses the same adjective form in sentences such as “a large boat” and “the boat is large,” Estonia-Swedish distinguishes between the two positions. The adjective takes different endings depending on whether it appears before the noun or after the verb.
“This way of inflecting adjectives is unique from a broader linguistic perspective. As far as we know, there are no other Germanic languages or dialects that work in the same way,” said Ida Västerdal, a doctoral student at the Department of Swedish, Multilingualism and Language Technology.
Old case endings found a new purpose
The phenomenon has its roots in a period when Swedish was losing its old case system. The Old Swedish case endings had already begun to lose their grammatical function when Swedish settlers arrived in Estonia.
In Sweden, these endings eventually disappeared altogether. In Estonia, however, they acquired a new role: The old endings were reinterpreted and came to mark the position of the adjective within the sentence.
“What were once remnants of a dying grammatical system were repurposed to create something new. You could compare it to linguistic recycling,” Västerdal said.
The thesis describes this development using the concept of exaptation, a term linguistics has borrowed from evolutionary biology. The concept is used to explain how something that originally served one function can acquire an entirely new use. A commonly cited example is feathers, which first evolved for insulation but later enabled flight in certain dinosaur species.
Challenging established theories
The discovery has implications far beyond the Estonia-Swedish dialects. Because researchers were previously unaware of any Germanic languages with this type of adjective inflection, it has generally been assumed that such a construction is not possible within the language family.
The Estonia-Swedish data analyzed in the thesis show that this assumption is incorrect.
“The results mean researchers need to reconsider certain theories about how grammar is structured in Swedish and other closely related languages.”
Documenting the last voices
Today, only a small number of elderly speakers of the Estonia-Swedish dialects remain. When the Soviet Union occupied Estonia during the 1940s, many Estonia Swedes were forced to flee to Sweden. There, the dialects largely have not been passed on to younger generations.
As part of the research, the last remaining dialect speakers were interviewed. These interviews were combined with analyses of older dialect texts to document and understand the unique grammatical system.
The study shows that even very small and endangered language varieties can provide crucial insights into how languages are structured and how they change over time.
“Some of the most interesting linguistic innovations emerge in environments that have developed outside the norms of standard languages. Estonia-Swedish shows how much we can still learn from small and nearly vanished dialects,” Västerdal said.
The thesis, “Adjective agreement in Estonia-Swedish: A study in change and variation,” was defended on June 5.
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Thesis: Adjective agreement in Estonia-Swedish: A study in change and variation
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