This volume explores morphosyntactic change in the Late Modern Swedish period from the 18th century and onwards. This period is interesting, for a number of reasons. This is when Swedish is ...established as a national standard language. New genres emerge, and the written language becomes more generally available to all speakers. We also sometimes find diverging developments in the different North Germanic languages, and some of the much-discussed differences between Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are established during this period. In addition, during the 19th and 20th centuries, the traditional dialects undergo more dramatic changes than ever. Yet, the Late Modern Swedish period has previously received fairly little attention in the syntactic literature. This volume aims to remedy this, with studies that cover several different grammatical domains, including case and verbal syntax, word order and agreement, and grammaticalization in the nominal domain. The study by Cecilia Falk investigates the possibility of promoting an indirect object to subject in a passive, that emerges during the period. A chapter by Fredrik Valdeson studies change in the use of ditransitive verbs, from a constructional perspective. Three chapters are concerned with word order change. The study by Ida Larsson and Björn Lundquist investigates the development of a strict word order in particle constructions. Adrian Sangfelt studies the possibility of having adverbials (and other constituents) between the separate verbal heads in complex VPs in the final stages of the shift from OV to VO order. Erik M. Petzell investigates embedded verb placement and agreement morphology in the Viskadalian dialect, which on the surface seems to contradict the Rich Agreement Hypothesis. Mikael Kalm discusses the emergence of different kinds of adverbial infinitival clauses in the standard written language compared to Övdalian. Finally, the study by Lars-Olof Delsing is concerned with a case of grammaticalization in the nominal domain, specifically the development of the gradable adjectives mycket ‘much’ and lite ‘little’ into quantifiers.
Head Conjuncts Petzell, Erik M.
Linguistic inquiry,
2017, Letnik:
48, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
It is sometimes taken for granted that heads as well as phrases may form coordinate conjuncts. Still, what looks like a head may be a phrase with only the head visible. This loophole is shut, ...however, when we turn to Old Swedish stylistic fronting. In certain contexts, only single-word expressions are fronted, which leads to the conclusion that head fronting is indeed going on. When these heads originate in a coordinate structure, they must constitute the entire first conjunct, and cannot be part of an elliptic phrasal conjunct; otherwise, the ellipsis is not properly licensed.
Introducing syntactic variation and change Håkansson, David; Larsson, Ida; Erik Magnusson Petzell
Linguistic variation,
01/2017, Letnik:
17, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This special issue of Linguistic Variation contains three articles and a squib, all of which deal with syntactic microvariation and change: the areas of interest range from previously well-studied ...phenomena to lesser-known domains, using both modern data and historical examples. In what follows, we present the four contributions in some more detail.
This paper deals with differences in word order between two sets of Low German letters from the 15th century: letters sent from Swedish cities and letters sent from other parts of the Hanseatic ...sphere. In the letters originating from Sweden, the so-called brace construction (whereby the finite and non-finite verbs are separated by a non-subject argument) is, just as in 15th century Swedish, evenly distributed across main and subordinate clauses; in non-Swedish letters, on the other hand, the brace is predominantly a main clause word order. The paper argues that this difference can be explained by the scribal practices of the Swedish chancelleries, involving instantaneous transference from (dictated) Swedish to (written) Low German.
•Low German word order in 15th century letters varies between areas.•In Low German letters from Swedish cities, the word order is influenced by Swedish.•The influence seems to be due to Low German scribes taking Swedish dictation.
•Poetic word order has a non-complex relationship to ordinary grammar.•Remnants from older stages in grammar can complicate the pattern.•The wish for special effects can also break the pattern.
It is ...generally assumed that recurrent deviations from ordinary language in poetry have a non-complex relationship to ordinary grammar. This assumption has been formulated by Fabb (2010) as the Development Hypothesis (DH). In this paper, DH is elaborated within a generative framework and tested upon deviant word order in a sample of 19th century Swedish poetry. The result is that the hypothesis is fairly well corroborated, although not totally. In closing, an alternative hypothesis by Thoms (2010), the Non-Uniformity Hypothesis, is tested. It claims that poetry has more of its own syntax. This hypothesis is shown to yield, on the whole, predictions just as good as DH. Neither of the hypotheses, however, lasts the entire course.
This article addresses the varying verb phrase internal order between verbs (V) and objects (O) in the Germanic languages. More specifically, it argues (with Haider 2014) that originally, all ...Germanic languages had a verb phrase (VP) with a variable V position but today, only Yiddish has preserved this system. Consequently, the fixed V position (generating either VO or OV order) in the other Germanic languages is treated as a secondary development. It seems that verb-second (V2) clauses, crucially involving V movement out of the VP, have been an important part of this transition. It is likely that the reason Yiddish has managed to retain the variableV position is that it has been surrounded by Slavonic majority languages from the Middle Ages onwards, unlike the other Germanic languages. The variable V position within the VP is a typical trait of Slavonic languages. The archaic VP syntax of Yiddish can thus be seen as a product of long-lasting language contact.
This article deals with the relations between coordination and word order in the history of Swedish. In Present‐day Swedish, the finite verb always raises to Co in main‐clause coordination, whereas ...it always remains in situ (in VP) in subordinate clause coordination. In Older Swedish, either verbal position was possible in both cases. In addition, VS word order was used in contexts where it would be ungrammatical today. Subordinate conjuncts with V in Co, main clause conjuncts with V in Vo, and VS conjuncts are all analysed as parts of coordination, in which only the first conjunct contains a trace after an extracted element; this type of trace asymmetry characterises a wide range of coordinate structures in Older Swedish. In the modern language, on the other hand, a trace in a first conjunct is always matched with equivalent traces in all subsequent conjuncts (the traces occur across the board).
PDF
