FACTORS INFLUENCING CONSERVATISM AND PURISM IN LANGUAGES OF NORTHERN EUROPE

This paper shows common extralinguistic factors influencing conservatism and purism in languages of Northern Europe (Nordic, Baltic, Finnic). Users ’ motivation, environ-ment, culture, history and conscious policy are the keys to understand some tendencies in the slower rate of change of these languages. This article is based on my studies about the rate of changes in languages (Piech-nik 2014) in order to further develop some questions that have arisen from those deliberations, with the main focus on languages in Northern Europe. It demonstrates that the fast erosion or archaic character of languages has not been taking place much due to geographical and chronological factors or intralinguistic reasons, but mainly due to other extralinguistic factors. It turns out that languages of Northern Europe are more conservative than the southern ones. However, some of them have been evolving faster, while others more slowly. I have decided to look at this phenomenon more closely in this study,1 focusing on two hallmarks in languages of this northern area: conservatism and purism, which always go hand in hand. I will try to show their roots, actual state and prospects for the future. My considerations 1 I am very grateful to two anonymous reviewers who gave me precious remarks and comments. Thanks to them, this study is now improved and hopefully more comprehensible. Here, I have to point out too that this study is rather a handful of observations in some languages in the northern area of Europe than a proposition of any rules. Observed phenomena still need further studies on different factors in order to find out degrees in the rates of change in languages. 396 IWONA PIECHNIK are limited to three main groups of languages spoken in Northern Europe: Nordi