The Spread of the Phrasal clitic sa in Faroese

Abstract

In Faroese the phrasal clitic sa is used in possessive constructions like Jákup=sa skegg ‘Jákup’s beard’. Originally the clitic could only be attached to kinship nouns or proper nouns of persons and other nouns with a similar function, but in recent years the sa has spread to other host nouns like animate, human nouns and pronouns partly as the result of convergence. This article explores the origin of -sa. It will be posit that a form like hansa ‘his’ in the Ballad Language in all likelihood shows that the old genitive plural ending a at some point in the history of Faroese was productive.