1 - Setting the Scene

Summary

This chapter provides a brief overview of the shared phonological phenomena found in northern Europe, including preaspiration, tonal accents, sonorant preocclusion, and a few others. It then introduces the varieties analysed in the book, noting their genealogical affiliation, their geographical and sociohistorical context, and the role of language contact in their development. The discussion proceeds by geographical region and historical period rather than by genealogical grouping, covering mainland Fennoscandia, the Baltic littoral, and Britain and Ireland before and after the intrusion of Germanic, and the world of the North Atlantic islands. It also briefly lays out the theoretical argument of the book, highlighting in particular how the phonological convergences discussed in the subsequent chapters are the product of Sapirian drift and how the theoretical tools proposed in the book are able to account for such convergence, even in unrelated languages.