On levelling of frequent paradigmatic relations in Faroese noun plurals

This article accounts for levelling of a once frequent and productive paradigmatic alternation between Insular Nordic (i.e. Faroese and Icelandic) noun plurals, as in nominative plural hestar ∼ accusative plural hesta ‘horses’ and nominative plural gestir ∼ accusative plural gesti ‘guests’. Both alternations survive in Icelandic but were levelled to nominative/accusative plural hestar, gestir in Faroese by around 1900. While almost all masculines engaged in the older alternations, roughly 63% of nouns showed syncretism of nominative/accusative plural, many in final - r. Here, I adopt a usage-based cognitive approach, emphasising the probabilistic impact of usage factors such as frequency on domain-general cognitive processes as the mechanism of language change. I argue that several related Faroese changes conspired to provide a proportional basis for levelling to syncretism in that language only. In this spirit, the current article serves as a language-specific case study of cross-linguistically common nominative-accusative syncretism and assesses how the direction of levelling reflects the emergent structure of grammar.