Interplay between loanwords and native words in the Third Grammatical Treatise

Abstract

The article is concerned with the coexistence and interplay of loanwords and native words (synonymic word pairs) in the Third Grammatical Treatise. The discussion
offered in the present article is part of a larger research project on loanwords and native synonyms in Icelandic in the period from the twelfth century to around
1550. The focus of this article is on how loanword/native word pairs appear in the Third Grammatical Treatise and thus on the dynamics at the core of the alternation
between loanwords and native words in this work. In addition, the research seeks to establish a relative chonology for the constituents of each word pair. Finally, the
dynamics between loanwords and native words in the lexicon are illustrated in a set of generalizations.