Well some of those changes are not reflected in Scandinavian in general (many Scandinavian dialects have V-to-T, some have V2), so I'm not sure if it's actually relevant to the authors' hypothesis. But some of those changes also happened _in_ Scandinavian in recorded history. So the probability of these changes is relatively high given a 500-year span.
Borrowing "fundamental grammatical words and particles" (I'd go with "functional elements") is common too (the French of Prince Edward Island French is a famous example). That English has Scandinavian functional elements is uncontroversial, and previously was taken as evidence for contact, not descent.
Here's what I see as the facts underlying their claim. English went from a OV, V-to-T-to-C (thereby, V2) language to a VO language with no verb raising, in which it is similar to Scandinavian. I don't see how that's inconsistent with contact.
Thanks for clarifying this for me! I wish there had been a linguistics department at the school I went to, I'm sure I would have minored in it instead of philosophy.
Borrowing "fundamental grammatical words and particles" (I'd go with "functional elements") is common too (the French of Prince Edward Island French is a famous example). That English has Scandinavian functional elements is uncontroversial, and previously was taken as evidence for contact, not descent.
Here's what I see as the facts underlying their claim. English went from a OV, V-to-T-to-C (thereby, V2) language to a VO language with no verb raising, in which it is similar to Scandinavian. I don't see how that's inconsistent with contact.