Marius Nygaard

Marius Nygaard

Marius Nygaard (born September 13, 1838 in Bergen , † February 7, 1912 in Christiania ) was a Norwegian teacher and linguist.

Youth and Career

His parents were the skipper and later merchant Mads Christensen Nygaard (1793-1875) and his wife Maren Behrens (1806-1875). He married on August 5, 1863 in Bergen Elizabeth ("Elise") Martin (July 28, 1842– May 9, 1923), daughter of the bank clerk William Martin (actually Ole Thistel Bergmann) (1801–1872) and his wife Maren Elizabeth ( "Elisa") Maxwell (1805-1873).

Marius Nygaard combined practical teaching and research on the syntax of the Old Norse language. He had a decisive influence on the spelling reform of 1907, which broke with the Danish written language.

Nygaard grew up in Bergen. After the Examen artium 1855 he studied philology in Christiania and passed his exam in 1861. After graduating from 1862 to 1863 he was an hourly teacher at the Cathedral School in Bergen. From 1864 to 1876 he was an assistant teacher at the Cathedral School in Kristiansand. A year later he became a senior teacher and moved to Fredrikshald , where he was principal of the grammar school from 1877 to 1894. From 1894 to 1910 he was rector of the Latin and Realschule in Drammen. Among other things, he taught Latin, and together with Jan Johanssen and Emil Schreiner wrote a Latin dictionary in 1887, which, with its fourth edition in 1998, is still the standard dictionary in Norway today.

The language reformer

During his student days, Nygaard was part of the Bergensian language innovators who founded “Vestmannalaget” (Society of Western Men) in 1868. He was a supporter of Ivar Aasen and was an opponent of Knud Knudsen's Norwegianization plans . The western men strived for a stronger connection to the old Norwegian in Landsmål . In an exchange of letters with Ivar Aasen, he turned against what he believed to be too far-reaching ideas of the Bergensian language innovators.

In 1867 Nygaard submitted a draft for a grammar for Landsmål, in which he had taken Aasen's criticisms into account. A concise presentation of this grammar appeared in Bergen that same year, the first book to appear in normalized Nynorsk . As a member of the teaching council (he was its chairman from 1904 to 1908), he strived for greater consideration of the Landsmål in school lessons, but was mainly concerned with reforming the traditional written language.

As a linguist, Nygaard studied the syntax of Norrøn. In 1865 and 1867, two volumes of his Syntax der Sprach der Edda were published, and from 1879 to 1900 a series of individual studies, all of which were preparatory work for his Norrøn Syntax from 1905. He himself researched in this area until the end of his life. His abandoned papers were issued in 1917.

In 1898 he became a member of the commission that should comment on the proposal for a spelling reform for the Riksmål , which had been submitted by several researchers. In 1900 he submitted an essentially positive opinion. The ministry did not deal with it initially. When the parties Høyre and Venstre had included the Norwegianization of the language in their party program in 1906, Nygaard proposed the government to develop a program for spelling reform. He was commissioned with others to come up with a proposal, and the result is the 1907 spelling reform.

He was also active in local politics and sat in the city parliaments of Kristiansand, Fredrikshald and Drammen.

Honors

Marius Nygaard was a member of the Kongelige Norske Videnskabers Selskab from 1877 , from 1880 a member of the Videnskabsselskabet i Kristiania (today the Norwegian Academy of Sciences ) and from 1889 a member of the Det kongelige nordiske oldskriftselskab in Copenhagen. In 1890 he became a first class knight of the Order of St. Olav and in 1910 its commander of the second class.

Works

• Eddasprogets syntax. 2 volumes, Bergen 1865–1867.
• Kortfatt Fremstilling af det norske Landsmaals grammar. Bergen 1867.
• Kortfatt Fremstilling af den oldnorske Formlære. Bergen 1871.
• Oldnorsk grammar til Skolebrug. Bergen 1871.
• Oldnorsk Læsebog for Begyndere. Bergen 1872.
• Udvalg af den norrøne Literatur for Latin- and Realgymnasier. Bergen 1875 (18th edition 1972)
• Betydningen and Brugen af ​​Verbet munu. In: Aarbøger for nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie. 1878, pp. 259-303.
• Om brugen af ​​det saakaldte præsens particip i oldnorsk. In: Aarbøger for nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie. 1879, pp. 203-228.
• Om brugen af ​​subjunctive i oldnorsk.
  • Om brugen af ​​subjunctive i oldnorsk . In: Gustav Storm, et al. (Ed.): Arkiv för nordisk filologi (ANF) . Episode 1, volume 1 . JW Cappelen, Christiania [Oslo] 1883, p. 113–149 (multilingual, runeberg.org - continued: III. Substantiviske bisætninger (substantiviske atsætninger; spørgende bisætninger). Pp. 314–351).
  • Om brugen af ​​subjunctive i oldnorsk. - Fortsættelse fra 1ste Bind p. 351. In: Gustav Storm, et al. (Ed.): Arkiv för nordisk filologi (ANF) . Episode 1, volume 2 . JW Cappelen, Christiania [Oslo] 1885, p. 193–206 (multilingual, runeberg.org - continued: V. Adverbiale bisætninger. Pp. 356–375).
  • Om brugen af ​​konjunktiv i oldnorsk - Fortsættelse fra 2det Bind p. 375. In: Gustav Storm, et al. (Ed.): Arkiv för nordisk filologi (ANF) . Episode 1, volume 3 . JW Cappelen, Christiania [Oslo] 1886, p. 97-120 (multilingual, runeberg.org ).
• Latinsk Ordbog (together with J. Johanssen and E. Schreiner). 1887 (4th edition 1998)
• Sproget i Norge i fortid and nutid. Bergen 1890.
• Udeladelse af subject, “subjektløse” sætninger i det norrøne sprog (the classic saga style) . In: Axel Kock, et al. (Ed.): Arkiv för nordisk filologi (ANF) . New episode, volume 6 (= band 10 of the complete edition). CWK Gleerups förlag, Lund 1894, p. 1-25 (multilingual, runeberg.org ).
• Norrøn syntax. 1905 (reprint 1966).
• Remarks, notes and supplements to the standard syntax. (posthumously) 1917.

Remarks

1. ↑ The "Examen artium" was the regular entrance examination for university, which required knowledge of Latin and Greek. So it corresponded to the Abitur, but was accepted by the university until 1883.

literature

• Eyvind Fjeld Halvorsen: Marius Nygaard. In: Norsk biografisk leksikon. ( [1] , accessed February 11, 2010).
• Marius Nygaard: Kortfatt Fremstilling af det norske Landsmaals grammar in facsimile.