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In this book, Holmberg and Platzack present a theory of the role which subject-verb agreement and case morphology play in syntax. Their theory is based mainly on a detailed comparison and inflectional properties in the various Scandinavian languages, although many other languages are discussed as well. The theoretical issues discussed include abstract vs. morphological case, functional heads, verb-second, null subjects and other empty categories, pronouns and clitics, various impersonal constructions, long distance reflexives, and the double object construction. Probably the most detailed and comprehensive study to date of the interplay of case, subject-verb agreement, and other grammatical properties in the syntax of related languages, this book offers important insights for professional linguists and students with an interest in generative grammar, typology/comparative grammar, or Scandinavian and Germanic languages.

This study addresses gender assignment in six North Scandinavian varieties with a three-gender system: Old Norse, Norwegian (Nynorsk), Old Swedish, Nysvenska, Jamtlandic, and Elfdalian. Focusing on gender variation and change, we investigate the role of various factors in gender change. Using the contemporary Swedish varieties Jamtlandic and Elfdalian as a basis, we compare gender assignment in other North Scandinavian languages, tracing the evolution back to Old Norse. The data consist of 1,300 concepts from all six languages coded for cognacy, gender, and morphological and semantic variation. Our statistical analysis shows that the most important factors in gender change are the Old Norse weak/strong inflection, Old Norse gender, animate/inanimate distinction, word frequency, and loan status. From Old Norse to modern languages, phonological assignment principles tend to weaken, due to the general loss of word-final endings. Feminine words are more susceptible to changing gender, and the tendency to lose the feminine is noticeable even in the varieties in our study upholding the three-gender system. Further, frequency is significantly correlated with unstable gender. In semantics, only the animate/inanimate distinction signifi-cantly predicts gender assignment and stability. In general, our study confirms the decay of the feminine gender in the Scandinavian branch of Germanic.

In this study, we present an analysis of gender assignment tendencies in Jamtlandic, a language variety of Sweden, using a word list of 1029 items obtained from fieldwork. Most research on gender assignment in the Scandinavian languages focuses on the standard languages (Steinmetz 1985; Källström 1996; Trosterud 2001, 2006) and Norwegian dialects (Enger 2011, Kvinlaug 2011, Enger & Corbett 2012). However, gender assignment principles for Swedish dialects have not previously been researched. We find generalizations based on semantic, morphological, and phonological principles. Some of the principles apply more consistently than others, some ‘win’ in competition with other principles; a multinomial logistic regression analysis provides a statistical foundation for evaluating the principles. The strongest tendencies are those based on biological sex, plural inflection, derivational suffixes, and some phonological sequences. Weaker tendencies include non-core semantic tendencies and other phonological sequences. Gender assignment in modern loanwords differs from the overall material, with a larger proportion of nouns assigned masculine gender.

This is the first account of Old Norse syntax for almost a hundred years and the first ever in a non-Scandinavian language. The language of the Vikings and of the Old Icelandic sagas is the best documented medieval Germanic language: the author presents a full analysis of its syntax and overviews of its phonology and morphology. He includes a compl.

In order to contribute to the understanding of the nature of inflection, this paper investigates the endings on pre-nominal adjectives in four Germanic languages: Dutch, Norwegian, German, and Yiddish. Incorporating detailed observations about Yiddish in general and non-canonical nominals in particular, this study confirms Harbert's (The Germanic languages, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007) classification of the Mainland Scandinavian languages as semantically determining their inflections but of German as encoding case, number, and gender on its endings. The latter is shown to be regulated by lexical factors. Dutch is grouped with Norwegian and Yiddish with German. While all four languages differ in their details, the paper proposes that compared to Dutch, the Norwegian weak inflections require a subset of definiteness (sub-)components and that in comparison to German, the Yiddish weak inflections require a subset of lexical triggers. Whereas weak endings only surface inside DPs, which are necessarily definite in Dutch and Norwegian, strong endings are shown to appear in more diverse contexts. Given the language-specific conditions on the distribution of the weak inflections, the strong endings are interpreted as the elsewhere case in all languages.

This article traces the diachronic development from the Proto Norse demonstrative hinn via the Old Icelandic definite article(s) to the Modern Icelandic article system. This demonstrative gave rise to two distinct article elements during the Viking period that are well-attested from Old Icelandic onwards, a freestanding and a suffixed article. Based on evidence from Old Icelandic, I argue for a categorial distinction between an adjectival and a nominal article, which does not entirely coincide with a mere morpho-phonological distinction. The former, which mostly occurs as a freestanding element, is a genuine component of AP, not an immediate constituent of the nominal extended projection. The latter, which only occurs in suffixal form, heads a low projection in the extended nominal projection and has scope only over the noun. For Modern Icelandic, on the other hand, I will adopt the idea that free and suffixed articles are two surface manifestations of the same element. The diachronic perspective is complemented by an examination of the development of seven adjectivally modified definite noun phrase patterns. This empirical survey reveals several surprising facts: The standard pattern of modification in Modern Icelandic was virtually non-existent prior to the 17th century, and double definiteness persisted until the early 20th century. Likewise, certain modificational patterns otherwise found in Mainland Scandinavian were dominant between the 16th and 19th century. This latter observation points to a competition between two adjectival articles hinn vs. sá similar to the one that had taken place earlier in Mainland Scandinavian. In Icelandic, however, sá did not replace hinn, and, in the long run, a pattern not comprising an adjectival article became the dominant one.

The definite article in many European languages has its origin in a demonstrative or a pronoun. The development into a definite article is a typical case of grammaticalization. In this article I will demonstrate that this kind of grammaticalization, like all kinds of grammaticalization, can be explained as a case of reduction through reanalysis at acquisition. In addition to the prenominal definite article shared with other Germanic languages, the Scandinavian languages also have a postposed definite article. In Old Norse the postnominal definite article is a clitic merged as a head in D, while in its modern descendent Norwegian it is an inflectional suffix checking a grammatical feature in the Infl domain, expressing definiteness within the DP according to general principles of agreement. Thus, so-called 'double definiteness' (den garnie hesten 'the old horse. DEF') has become possible as an agreement phenomenon. In Old Norse, the clitic cannot trigger definiteness agreement. This change from a clitic to an inflectional suffix is obviously a case of grammaticalization, but it has wider implications than just the change of morphosyntactic status. ON is shown to have had two projections in the D domain (pau in storu skip 'those the large ships'). Later the independent definite article inn was lost and replaced by the demonstrative pann> den. As a result (or cause?) its projection was lost, and the postposed article was left without a free-word counterpart. This, combined with phonological reduction and semantic bleaching, reduced it to an inflectional suffix.

This paper reconsiders the distribution of verb movement in Scandinavian in light of new data from Norwegian and Icelandic. The main claim is that Regional Northern Norwegian displays optional verb movement to the inflectional domain, whereas Icelandic has no independent verb movement at all to this domain, contrary to standard assumptions: All verb movement in Icelandic is to the CP domain of the clause. A remnant movement approach to verb movement is explored and it is proposed that movement to the CP domain and movement corresponding to V-to-I movement differ in amount of material pied-piped. The analysis presented captures the observed differences between the two movements.

This paper reports on a test of the validity of Pienemann's (1998) Processability Theory (PT). This theory predicts that certain morphological and syntactic phenomena are acquired in a fixed sequence. Three phenomena were chosen for this study: attributive adjective morphology, predicative adjective morphology, and subordinate clause syntax (placement of negation). These phenomena are located at successive developmental stages in the hierarchy predicted by PT. We test whether they actually do appear in this predicted hierarchical order in the L2 of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish learners. The three languages mentioned are very closely related and have the same adjective morphology and subordinate clause syntax. We can, therefore, treat them as one language for the purposes of this study. Three analyses have been carried out: The first follows Pienemann's theory and is concerned only with syntactic levels; the second is a semantic analysis of the acquisition of number versus that of gender; the third analysis studies the various kinds of mismatches between the inflection of the noun, the controller, and the adjective. The results are the following: The first test supports PT as it has been described by Pienemann. The second analysis shows that there is an acquisitional hierarchy such that number is acquired before gender (in adjectives), and the mismatch analysis raises questions about the fundamental assumptions of the theory.