Sverre Stausland

• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2025). Norsk busetjing på Færøyarne etter svartedauden. Norsk Årbok. ISSN 0809-7232. s. 154–159. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2025). Likskapen millom norsk og færøysk. Norsk Årbok. ISSN 0809-7232. s. 139–153. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Evjen, Maria; Roettger, Timo & Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2025). Investigating potential MERGED and DISTINCT speakers in an ongoing merger — Evidence from production and perception. Laboratory Phonology. 16(1), s. 1–42. doi: 10.16995/labphon.18881. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This study investigates whether it is possible to use evidence from production and perception to identify different types of speakers in the study of the ongoing merger of /ʃ/ and /ç/ in Norwegian. Specifically, by investigating the acoustic and perceptual characteristics of the contrast between /ʃ/ and /ç/, we examine whether we can draw a principled line between speakers who have the merger (MERGED speakers) and speakers who do not have the merger (DISTINCT speakers). Our findings indicate that speakers and listeners in part rely on the same parameters when producing and perceiving the contrast between /ʃ/ and /ç/ in Norwegian, most notably spectral standard deviation and intensity. In both production and perception, speakers form continua, from having small or no acoustic differences between /ʃ/ and /ç/ to having large differences, and from having productions which cannot be distinguished by listeners to having productions which are reliably distinguished by listeners. While we find an overlap between these distributions, indicating that some speakers at the extremities are MERGED and DISTINCT speakers, these continua do not allow for a clear boundary between groups. Any grouping of speakers will therefore have to rely on an arbitrary boundary between MERGED and DISTINCT speakers.

• Kaldhol, Nina Hagen & Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2025). There is no ‘one High tone per word’ rule in Somali. I Iosad, Pavel & Köhnlein, Björn (Red.), Synchronic and diachronic approaches to tonal accent. Oxford University Press. ISSN 9780198877011. s. 118–145. doi: 10.1093/9780191988080.003.0005. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2024). Knud Knudsen og upphavet åt ordet ordskifte. Norsk Årbok. ISSN 0809-7232. s. 48–71. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2024). Fyresegner fyre ordkløyving i norsk. Norsk Årbok. ISSN 0809-7232. s. 201–204. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland; Evjen, Maria & Lukas, Luca (2024). Tyngd på fyrsta stavingi i lånord. Norsk Årbok. ISSN 0809-7232. s. 89–102. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2023). Oppklaringer om 1901-rettskrivningen. NLT - Norsk lingvistisk tidsskrift. ISSN 0800-3076. 41(1), s. 147–173. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  I 2020 og 2021 publiserte jeg to artikler om den såkalte 1901-rettskrivningenfor norsk. Lars S. Vikør publiserte senere i 2021 en «gjennomgang» av disse toartiklene i Norsk Lingvistisk Tidsskrift. Her sier Vikør seg enig i det meste avinnholdet i artiklene, men retter også kritikk mot noe av innholdet og fremstil-lingen. I denne artikkelen svarer jeg på Vikørs kritikk. Artikkelen vil vise atVikør i stor grad bygger sin kritikk på misvisende gjengivelser i sekundærlitte-ratur, og at han kritiserer meg for å underslå forhold som jeg eksplisitt har gjortrede for. Konklusjonene fra mine artikler blir derfor stående, inkludert påstandenom at en norsk rettskrivning ble offisielt fastslått allerede i 1893

• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2022). Villgang i vig og verja. Norsk Årbok. ISSN 0809-7232. s. 69–78. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Stausland (2021). The origin of the Proto-Indo-European nominal plural ending *-ōs. Historische Sprachforschung. ISSN 0935-3518. 134(1), s. 186–195. doi: 10.13109/hisp.2021.134.1.186. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Under the view that Proto-Indo-European (PIE) formed its nominal plural forms by adding the plural marker *-s to the case suffix, the ‘expected’ nom.pl. ending in thematic stems would be *-oss, in which the plural marker *-s is added to the nom.sg. ending *-os. By Szemerényi’s law, such an original ending *-oss would give *-ōs with simplification of the final *-ss and lengthening of the preceding vowel. Since the postulated development of *-oss to *-ōs matches the ending *-ōs reconstructed for PIE, it is hypothesized in this paper that the scenario sketched above reflects the actual origin of this reconstructed ending.

• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2021). 1901-rettskrivingi var den fyrsta samnorsk-umboti. Norsk Årbok. ISSN 0809-7232. s. 111–118. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland & Kaldhol, Nina Hagen (2021). Grammaticalization in Somali and the development of morphological tone. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America. 6(1), s. 587–599. doi: 10.3765/plsa.v6i1.4993. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  We demonstrate how grammaticalization may cause the restructuring of prosodic systems, leading to the development of new prosodic types. Illustrated with data from Northern Somali and related varieties, we show how a restricted tone system has developed into one of morphological tone through grammatical­ization of independent words to bound forms. Diachronic change has weakened the “accentual” properties of the High tone in Somali, and the tone patterns are synchronically best analyzed as properties of morphological constructions rather than of prosodic domains.

• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2020). 1901-rettskrivinga, midlandsmakselen og riksstyremalet. Arkiv för nordisk filologi. ISSN 0066-7668. 135, s. 95–111. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2020). 1901-rettskrivinga, midlandsmakselen og riksstyremålet. Arkiv för nordisk filologi. ISSN 0066-7668. 135, s. 95–111. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2020). Norske ord og norsk ordleiding: Slag og type. Norsk Årbok. ISSN 0809-7232. s. 91–99. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2020). Grunnleggjande spørsmål om språkendring og norsk språkhistorie: Ein omtale av Norsk språkhistorie I - Mønster. NLT - Norsk lingvistisk tidsskrift. ISSN 0800-3076. 37(1), s. 77–138. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2019). Grunnleggjande spørsmål om språkendring og norsk språkhistorie. NLT - Norsk lingvistisk tidsskrift. ISSN 0800-3076. 37(1), s. 77–138. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Denne artikkelen er ein grann omtale og gjennomgang av det fyrste bandet i verket Norsk språkhistorie, som er etla til det nye oppslagsverket for emnet. To sider ved framgangsmåten i denne boka vert kritiserte. For det fyrste vert språkendringar tekne for å vera målretta og heimevaksne i staden for å vera sjølvdrivne endringar som spreier seg gjennom sosial tilpassing. For det andre skil ikkje forfattarane mellom den norske og norsk-danske utviklingslina i språkhistoria, og dei tek norskætta og danskætta språktrekk for å gå ut på det same. Attåt vert ei rekkje andre misgrep i boka framlyfte og drøfte. Jamvel om gjennomgangen av den norske språkhistoria i det store og heile er god, kan ikkje denne fyrsteutgåva nå målet om å verta det nye oppslagsverket for norsk språkhistorie. Difor er det von om at ei ny og omvølt utgåve kan koma på marknaden.

• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2016). Neighborhood density in phonological alternations. Proceedings of the Annual Meetings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. ISSN 0363-2946. 36, s. 426–440. doi: 10.3765/bls.v36i1.3928. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2016). Null subjects, preproprial articles, and the syntactic structure of Old Norwegian pronouns. NLT - Norsk lingvistisk tidsskrift. ISSN 0800-3076. 34(2), s. 183–217. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  In Old Norwegian (ON), 1st and 2nd person null subjects (1/2 NS) are much rarer than 3rd person null subjects (3 NS). It has been suggested in recent work that 1/2 NS are ungrammatical and in fact do not exist in ON. According to this view, only 3rd person pronouns can be null subjects, because only they are not DPs (determiner phrases). For this latter claim to be true, ON cannot have preproprial articles, as this would indicate that 3rd person pronouns are DPs. This article presents ON data to demonstrate that the language has both 1/2 NS and preproprial articles. Since all ON personal pronouns appear to be DPs, there is little support for the purported difference in syntactic structure; thus, the observed asymmetry between 1/2 NS and 3 NS must have other, possibly extra-grammatical, causes.

• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2015). Dialect change in South-East Norway and the role of attitude in diffusion. Journal of Sociolinguistics. ISSN 1360-6441. 19(5), s. 612–642. doi: 10.1111/josl.12156. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  A common claim in the literature is that the local dialects in South-East Norway are being leveled towards the dialect of the upper social classes in Oslo. A meta-analysis of previous studies on dialect change in this region demonstrates that this assertion is incorrect, and that linguistic features have diffused from the dialect of the lower social classes in Oslo. Attitude studies show that people in South-East Norway have strongly negative views on the upper Oslo speech community, and this can largely explain why they do not adopt new linguistic features from this community. Within Oslo, however, linguistic features diffuse from the upper classes down to the lower classes, and the overall picture that can be drawn from these diffusion patterns is that the lower-class dialect of Oslo is spreading its features outwards from the capital, at the same time as it is gradually disappearing as a distinct sociolect.

• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2015). Vowel reduction in verbs in King Alfred's Pastoral Care, Historical Linguistics 2013. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISSN 9789027248534. s. 19–40. doi: 10.1075/cilt.334.02joh. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  An original unstressed vowel *ō generally develops to a in Old English. In some categories, however, both a and u are found as reflexes. The traditional explanation for this phenomenon posits that *ō developed to u when the following syllable also had a *u. A statistical analysis of the distribution of a and u in such forms in an Old English text finds no support for this theory. Since shortened vowels tend to raise and unstressed vowels in medial syllables are shorter than in final syllables, I hypothesize in this paper that *ō shortened and raised to u in medial syllables. A statistical analysis of the same text strongly supports this new hypothesis. This vowel raising process can be explained by neuromuscular and perceptual properties. Producing short low vowels increases the risk of undershooting the vowel target, which translates into vowel raising. At the same time, a shortened low vowel can be misperceived as a higher vowel, since high vowels are shorter than low vowels. With these explanations, a formal grammatical analysis is not needed to explain why vowel raising takes place.

• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2015). Språkendringar langs Oslofjorden. I Sandøy, Helge (Red.), Talemål etter 1800. Norsk i jamføring med andre nordiske språk.. Novus Forlag. ISSN 9788270998432. s. 125–158. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2012). A diachronic account of phonological unnaturalness. Phonology. ISSN 0952-6757. 29(3), s. 505–531. doi: 10.1017/S0952675712000243. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Norwegian retroflexion exhibits some phonetic properties that do not seem to ‘make sense’. In Standard East Norwegian, an alveolar /ɾ/ causes a following alveolar coronal to become postalveolar, and in the Frogner and Arendal dialects of Norwegian, the same postalveolarisation process is triggered by a uvular /ʁ/. Comparative analyses of Norwegian dialects reveal that these properties are the results of historical changes and phonological diffusion across dialects. Theories attempting to analyse Norwegian retroflexion as phonetically ‘natural’ can neither fully account for these properties of Norwegian retroflexion nor capture the typological generalisations found across Norwegian dialects.

• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2012). Variation in Norwegian retroflexion. Nordic Journal of Linguistics. ISSN 0332-5865. 35(2), s. 197–212. doi: 10.1017/S0332586512000194. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2012). From perception to phonology: The emergence of perceptually motivated constraint rankings. Lingua. ISSN 0024-3841. 122(2), s. 125–143. doi: 10.1016/j.lingua.2011.10.006. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2012). Syncope of long *ī in Old Norse nouns. I Theil, Rolf; Schmidt, Tom & Askedal, John Ole (Red.), Germansk filologi og norske ord. Festskrift til Harald Bjorvand på 70-årsdagen den 30. juli 2012. Novus Forlag. ISSN 9788270997008. s. 33–51. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2011). The phonetics and phonologization of Verner's law. I krisch, thomas & Lindner, Thomas (Red.), Indogermanistik und Linguistik im Dialog: Akten der XIII. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft vom 21. bis 27. September 2008 in Salzburg. Reichert Verlag. ISSN 9783895006814. s. 232–241. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2009). The development of voiced labiovelars in Germanic. I Jamison, Stephanie; Melchert, H. Craig & Vine, Brent (Red.), Proceedings of the 20th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference. Ute Hempen Verlag. ISSN 9783934106727. s. 197–211. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2009). Non-local binding in tenseless clauses. Chicago Linguistic Society - Papers from the Regional Meeting. ISSN 0577-7240. 45(2), s. 103–116. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre (2007). The development of voiced labiovelars in Germanic. Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics. ISSN 1542-6599. 12, s. 15–26. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre (2005). The historical development of Gothic aba and its n-stem anomalies. Historische Sprachforschung. ISSN 0935-3518. 118, s. 251–262. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre (2003). Ljodsamhøvet i AM 315 f fol. Arkiv för nordisk filologi. ISSN 0066-7668. 118, s. 47–75. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv

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• Røyneland, Unn; Opsahl, Toril; Haug, Dag Trygve Truslew; Johnsen, Sverre Stausland; Fløgstad, Guro Nore & Reinertsen, Hilde (2025). Presentasjon av Senter for norsk fagspråk i bruk for Styret i Språkrådet. doi: https:/www.hf.uio.no/senter-for-norsk-fagsprak-i-bruk/aktuelt/aktuelle-saker/senteraktivitet/. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2021). Ummæle av 'Språket som vart norsk'. NLT - Norsk lingvistisk tidsskrift. ISSN 0800-3076. 39(1), s. 207–219. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2020). Tilsvar til Sandøy, Conzett, Kristoffersen og Nesse. NLT - Norsk lingvistisk tidsskrift. ISSN 0800-3076. 38(2), s. 271–274. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland; Johannessen, Janne Bondi; Evjen, Maria & Priestley, Joel (2019). Tyngd på fyrste stavinga i lånord. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2014). Review of Kristján Árnason ‘The phonology of Icelandic and Faroese’. Phonology. ISSN 0952-6757. 31(2), s. 329–337. doi: 10.1017/S0952675714000141. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre Stausland (2013). The articulation of Norwegian retroflexes. Journal of Phonetics. ISSN 0095-4470. 41(1), s. 56–58. doi: 10.1016/j.wocn.2012.09.004. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Evjen, Maria; Johnsen, Sverre Stausland & Roettger, Timo (2026). The acoustics and perception of the Norwegian merger of /ʃ/ and /ç/. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This thesis investigates the ongoing merger of the fricatives /ʃ/ and /ç/ in Norwegian. Despite widespread attention in the literature, the merger has been subject to few thorough phonetic and phonological investigations. In this thesis, the merger is investigated from an acoustic and perceptual perspective. The overarching aims of the thesis are to 1) identify speakers who merge the fricatives (MERGED speakers) and speakers who do not (DISTINCT speakers), 2) document the outcome of the merger, and 3) investigate the motivation for the merger. These topics are addressed in three research papers. Paper I investigates the use of acoustics and perception to identify MERGED and DISTINCT speakers. The results show that speakers form continua both with regard to the magnitudes of their acoustic differences between /ʃ/ and /ç/ and with regard to listeners’ ability to identify their productions. Speakers in the lower and upper ends of the continua are likely to be MERGED and DISTINCT speakers, respectively, but any grouping of these speakers must rely on an arbitrary boundary. Paper II compares the acoustic and perceptual patterns of MERGED and DISTINCT speakers to document the outcome of the merger. The findings show that among the MERGED speakers, we find merging to [ʃ], [ç], and a sound in between. The outcome of the merger is thus subject to between-speaker variation. Paper III investigates the hypothesis that the perceptual similarity between /ʃ/ and /ç/ is the motivation for the merger. The results indicate that listeners confuse /ʃ/ and /ç/ for each other more than they confuse other pairs of Norwegian voiceless fricatives, suggesting that /ʃ/ and /ç/ are perceptually more similar. This similarity might lead to listener misperceptions and subsequently the merger of /ʃ/ and /ç/. In summary, this thesis contributes novel insights into our understanding of the merger of /ʃ/ and /ç/ and highlights the value of investigating acoustics and perception in the study of ongoing sound changes.

• Johnsen, Sverre (2011). The origin of variation in Norwegian retroflexion. ProQuest. ISSN 9781267107657. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Johnsen, Sverre (2005). The Germanic (i)jô-stem declension : origin and development. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Denna uppgåva er ei gransking av upphavet og framvoksteren til (i)jô-stomnen i dei gamle germanske måli. Fyrste luten er ei yversyn yver dei upphavlege klassane i det vediske målet, og deretter ei utgreiding um korso det proto-indoeuropeiske grunnlaget mest truleg såg ut. Den andre bolken tek fyre seg framvoksteren av desse klassone i dei germanske sermåli. Eg hev set serleg noggrant på skiftingi av nominativsendingane *-(i)jô og *-î i det germanske frummålet.

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