| 1. |
- Barddal, Johanna, et al.
(författare)
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The change that never happened: the story of oblique subjects
- 2003
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Ingår i: Journal of Linguistics. - 0022-2267. ; 39:3, s. 439-472
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper contributes to an ongoing debate on the syntactic status of oblique subject-like NPs in the ‘impersonal’ construction (of the type me-thinks) in Old Germanic. The debate is caused by the lack of canonical subject case marking in such NPs. It has been argued that these NPs are syntactic objects, but we provide evidence for their subject status, as in Modern Icelandic and Faroese. Thus, we argue that the syntactic status of the oblique subject-like NPs has not changed at all from object status to subject status, contra standard claims in the literature. Our evidence stems from Old Icelandic, but the analysis has implications for the other old Germanic languages as well. However, a change from non-canonical to canonical subject case marking (‘Nominative Sickness’) has affected all the Germanic languages to a varying degree.
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| 2. |
- Barðdal, Jóhanna, et al.
(författare)
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The Story of 'Woe'
- 2013
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Ingår i: Journal of Indo-European Studies. - 0092-2323. ; 41:3-4, s. 321-377
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In contrast to the received consensus in the historical-comparative linguistic community, we argue that syntactic reconstruction is both a plausible and a feasible enterprise. We illustrate this with an investigation of the syntactic behavior of *wai 'woe' across five subbranches of Indo-European, i.e. Indo-Iranian, Italic, Baltic, Slavic and Germanic. The adverbial interjection *wai 'woe' is found instantiating three different constructions, which we label: 1) the Bare Exclamative Construction, 2) the Dative Exclamative Construction, and 3) the Predicative Construction. We suggest that the Predicative Construction is archaic in the Indo-European languages, and that the Dative Exclamative Construction has developed from a focalized variant of the Predicative Construction, used in exclamatory context, since 'woe' is the quintessential candidate for being focused in situations of adversity. On the basis of the comparative evidence, all three constructions must be reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European, as well as a subject verb construction, which determines the default word order properties between the subject and the verb, and finally a focus construction where focalized material occurs in first position. We couch our analysis within the formalism of Sign-Based Construction Grammar, establishing beyond doubt that syntactic reconstruction is a viable endeavor within historical-comparative linguistics.
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| 3. |
- Dunn, Michael, et al.
(författare)
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Dative sickness : Aphylogenetic analysis of argument structure evolution in Germanic
- 2017
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Ingår i: Language. - : Project Muse. - 0097-8507 .- 1535-0665. ; 93:1, s. E1-E22
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A major argument against the feasibility of reconstructing syntax for proto-stages is the widely discussed lack of directionality of syntactic change. In a recent typology of changes in argument structure constructions based on Germanic (Barodal 2015), several different, yet opposing, changes are reported. These include, among others, processes sometimes called dative sickness, nominative sickness, and accusative sickness. In order to tease apart the roles of the different processes, we have carried out a phylogenetic trait analysis on a predefined data set of twelve predicates found across the Germanic phyla using the MULTISTATE method. This is, as far as we are aware, the first application of the MULTISTATE method (Pagel et al. 2004) in historical syntax. The results clearly favor one of the models, the dative sickness model, over any other model, as this model is the only one that can accurately account for both the observed diversity of case frames and the independently proposed philological reconstructions. Methods of evolutionary trait analysis can be used to model evolutionary paths of argument structure constructions, and they provide the perfect testing ground for hypotheses arrived at through philological reconstruction, based on classical historical-comparative methods.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Eythórsson, Thorhallur
(författare)
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Three Daughters and a Funeral : Re-reading the Tune Inscription
- 2013
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Ingår i: Futhark. - 1892-0950 .- 1892-0950. ; 3, s. 7-43
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper contains a new analysis of the runic inscription on the Tune stone, made on the basis of autopsies and various earlier proposals. While I agree with the view that there is a word missing at the top of side A (contra Grønvik 1981 and others), probably r<unoz>, I depart from the current communis opinio in proposing that side B consists of two independent subject-initial clauses. I argue that the first word in B1 is likely to be a personal name ending in -z and the subject of a verb meaning something like ‘erect’, of which staina ‘stone’ is the object. Moreover, I reject the analysis of dalidun in B2 as ‘made (nice), prepared’ (Seip 1929), presenting arguments supporting the emendation da<i>lidun (Bugge1891, in NIæR), thus giving þrijoz dohtriz da<i>lidun arbija ‘three daughters shared the inheritance’. Finally, I resuscitate the old idea of Läffler (1892, 1896a, 1896b) concerning sijostez, taking it at face value and considering the phrase sijostez arbijano to reflect an archaic legal term meaning ‘the closest family heirs’. Following Läffler I assume that the form is derived from a reflexive (rather than a root meaning ‘bind’, Bjorvand 2008), an analysis supported by a parallel in archaic Latin (suus heres ‘family heir, self-successor’). I conclude that the three daughters of Wōdurīdaz shared the inheritance as the closest family heirs, while some other person (perhaps Wīwaz) erected the stone.
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| 6. |
- Eythórsson, Thórhallur
(författare)
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Variation in the Syntax of the Older Runic Inscriptions
- 2012
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Ingår i: Futhark. - 1892-0950 .- 1892-0950. ; 2, s. 27-49
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- There is evidence for the so-called displacement verb second in the language of the runic inscriptions, which most previous scholarship has failed to recognize. This evidence consists of clauses in which the finite verb immediately precedes a subject pronoun (or a subject agreement marker). There is, however, variation with respect to the position of the verb, as it does not appear in second position in all cases. Contrary to common assumptions, however, there are only two reasonably clear examples of verb last order. The finite verb also occurs in absolute initial position in the clause, providing an example of verb first. Moreover, it can be argued that in the early runic language both object–verb and verb–object orders occur in the verb phrase. Furthermore, while determiners either precede or follow the head noun in the noun phrase, the adnominal genitive usually precedes it. On the other hand, only prepositions are attested in the runic corpus, no postpositions. These results shed light on the development of word order at the earliest stage of Germanic.
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| 7. |
- Platzack, Christer, et al.
(författare)
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Left branch extraction of nominal modifiers in old Scandinavian
- 2008
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Ingår i: Grammatical Change and Linguistic Theory : The Rosendal Papers. - 0166-0829. - 9789027233776 ; 113, s. 357-374
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Old Scandinavian differs from modern Scandinavian in allowing Left Branch Extractions of nominal modifiers. In this paper I argue that this difference is related to a difference in noun phrase structure between old Scandinavian and modern Scandinavian: old Scandinavian is a language where modifiers like adjectives, quanti-fiers and numerals are adjoined to NP, whereas in modern Scandinavian such modifiers are heads, taking the noun or its extended projection as its complement. The change from old Scandinavian to modern Scandinavian is seen as the result of a grammaticalization that follows van Gelderen’s (2004) economy principle “Be a head rather than a phrase”.
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| 8. |
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