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Grand Meeting 2009 in Älvdalen


Paper abstracts



Maia Andréasson (Gothenburg University):
Pronominal object shift:
the importance of investigating the first position


In this talk, I will present results from an ongoing corpus investigation of Danish, Swedish and to some extent Norwegian. I will argue that it is relevant and maybe also necessary to explore all positions for pronominal objects when investigating the underlying causes of (pronominal) object shift.

        Most previous analyses of pronominal object shift in Scandinavian languages focus on pronouns with NP antecedents and on the positions preceding and following a sentence adverbial, hence the notion object shift, see (1), where the pronoun henne (’her’) is placed in the shifted position, (1 a), and in the “in situ” position, (1 b). (
Read the rest of the abstract here)


Ásbjörg Benediktsdóttir (University of Iceland):
The New Passive: Children’s first passive?
 
In this paper I will report on a recent study on the use of the so-called new passive (or the new impersonal) in Icelandic child language. The results show that the new passive is the children’s first passive.  
 The new passive has been the focus of much attention in the scholarly literature recently and its status is debated (e.g. Maling and Sigurjónsdóttir 2002, Thráinsson 2007, Eythórsson 2008, Jónsson 2008). I will refer to it here as The New Construction, NC, as opposed to the canonical passive, CANPASS. 
 
(1)  a.  Lítill strákur var laminn. (CANPASS)
           little.M.NOM boy.M.NOM was hit.M.NOM 
      b.  Það var laminn lítill strákur. (CANPASS - expletive passive)
           there was hit.M.NOM little.M.NOM boy.M.NOM 
      c.  Það var lamið lítinn strák. (NC – accusative object)
           there was hit.NEUT.SG little.M.ACC boy.M.ACC

The NC differs from the canonical passive in various respects: (1) NP-movement is ungrammatical, (2) the post-verbal NP is unaffected by the Definiteness Effect (DE) and (3) the post-verbal NP preserves accusative case. These properties suggest that the post-verbal NP is an object, and not a subject. The clause-initial position is filled with
the expletive það or a topicalized phrase.
     It should be noted that the NC is an addition to other passive constructions, since speakers who accept the NC also accept the canonical passive (Maling and Sigurjónsdóttir 2002). As the NC has mostly been assumed to be a feature of children’s speech, it is interesting to examine if it is produced before the canonical passive. In this paper I present evidence from an elicited production study of 48
children at the age of 4;6–7;6. The results show that the NC is children’s first passive. In these first passives the expletive það and the auxiliary vera are typically left out and the children’s answers consist only of content (lexical) words; moreover, lexical case may be replaced by structural (accusative) case on the NP.
 
(2)         Kastað snjóboltanum / snjóboltann.   
              thrown.NEUT.SG snowball.the.M.DAT / M. ACC
 
Although children are known to use the NC around the age of 4, they don’t seem to use it productively until they are 6-8 years old. At that age they also begin using the canonical passive (with NP-movement). In these first attempts at CANPASS nominative is sometimes substituted for lexical case, as in (3b), similarly to the NC (and the situation in Faroese). As a result these structures resemble adjectival passives, but they differ from these in that their meaning isn’t stative. 
 
(3)   a.   Drengurinn henti bílnum. (Active – dative object)
             boy.the.M.NOM threw car.the.M.DAT 
       b.   Bíllinn var hentur. (CANPASS – nominative subject)
             car.the.M.NOM was thrown.M.NOM


Hans Bennis (Mertens Institute):
Dutch developments with dialect data in the context of CLARIN

In the context of the Dutch branch of the European CLARIN-project the Meertens Institute is involved in a number of projects which are probably starting in the second half of this year. We participate in a) a curation project, b) a metadata project, c) a harvesting project and d) a demonstration project. The syntactic and the morphological atlasses (MAND and SAND) play an important role in these developments. In this presentation I will shortly introduce these projects with a focus on the advantages of participating in these ict-infrastructure programmes for linguistic research.


Kristine Bentzen, Merete Anderssen, and Yulia Rodina (University of Tromsø):
The development of syntax in micro-Scandinavians: Object Shift in Norwegian child language

In this paper we report on a study of the acquisition of a phenomenon that is well-known in the Scandinavian languages, namely Object Shift (OS). Our study focuses on Norwegian. The traditional analysis of OS is that weak pronominal objects shift across negation, (1a), whereas full DP objects and contrastively stressed pronouns do not, (1b). However, the pattern is more complex that this. Various pronominal objects in fact do not shift across negation, despite not being stressed: det ‘it’ when referring to a clause or a VP, (2a) (cf. also Andréasson 2008), indefinite pronouns like en ‘one’ and noen ‘some,’ (2b) (cf. also Vikner 1997), and possessive pronouns, (2c). These pronouns obligatorily have to remain in situ.
Based on (among others) Holmberg (1999) and Mikkelsen (2006) we take OS to be a defocusing operation in that the common denominator for shifting elements is that they are defocused. The common denominator for non-shifting elements, on the other hand, is that they are focused. We thus see OS as a phenomenon occuring at the syntax- pragmatics interface. (Read the full abstract here.)


Eefje Boef (Meertens Instituut):
On doubly filled COMP in Dutch dialects
 
This talk will discuss the distribution of doubly filled COMP (DFC) across different configurations – embedded wh-questions, restrictive relative clauses and free relative clauses – in varieties of Dutch, as attested in a recently carried out pilot study investigating the patterns in the left peripheries of different (long-distance) wh-dependencies. The main goal of this talk is to give an overview of the distribution of DFC in relative clauses and wh-questions, and to provide insights into the licensing requirements of DFC and the featural make-up of the elements involved. Among the issues that will be addressed are the following: (i) the difference between DFC in relative clauses and DFC in wh-questions, (ii) differences in (the form of) DFC in clauses that are [+Q]/[+rel] and DFC in clauses that are not, and (iii) a preliminary comparison between the Dutch data and the German and Norwegian data as found in Bayer & Brandner (2006), Vangsnes (2005), and Westergaard & Vangsnes (2005).


Federica Cognola (University of Padua):
OV/VO word order in Mocheno main declarative clauses

In my talk I will take into consideration Mocheno, a Tyrolean dialect spoken in a Romance area (Fersina valley, Eastern Trentino, North of Italy), which has a mixed OV/VO syntax. In this language both orders are possible in main declarative clauses, but ruled out in sentences with operators (wh-interrogative elements and focalised XPs) showing up in the left periphery. Refusing to thake this as evidence in favour of the presence of two grammars and starting out from an antisymmetric framework (Kayne 1994), I will adduce evidence in favour of the claim that OV syntax involves in this language the use of a lowFocusP (Jayaseelan 2001, Belletti 2004, Poletto 2006) blocked in all cases an XP is extracted via operator movement from below the FocusP. (Read the full abstract here.)


Eva Engels (Aarhus University):
A co-occurrence restriction in expletive constructions
 
The talk focuses on a co-occurrence restriction in Faroese expletive constructions which – to the best of my knowledge – has not been noticed before: Though an overt expletive may optionally occur in subject position, (1), and an associate subject can occur in intermediate position (at least in certain varieties), (2), the sequence overt expletive<associate subject is ungrammatical, (3). (Note that this sequence is ruled out in the other Scandinavian languages for independent reasons: Icelandic does not permit overt expletives in subject position and Mainland Scandinavian does not permit associate subjects in intermediate position.)
 
(1)       Í dag  hava (tað) verið nakrir hundar úti í garðinum.
   today  have there been some dogs   out in garden-the
 
(2)  a.  Tað  hava nakrir hundar verið úti í garðinum.
           there  have some dogs   been out in garden-the
      b.  Tað  hefur onkur    keypt husið hjá Róa.
           there  has somebody   bought house-the of Rói
 
(3)  a.  Í dag    hava (*tað) nakrir hundar verið úti í garðinum.
           today    have there some dogs   been out in garden-the
      b.  Allarhelst  hefur (*tað) onkur    keypt husið hjá Róa.
           probably  has  there somebody   bought house-the of Rói
 
In existential constructions co-occurrence of clause-medial overt expletive and associate subject improves if the associate subject is negative, but it does not do so in transitive expletive
constructions; see the contrast in (4).
 
(4)  a.  Í dag   hava (tað) eingir hundar  verið úti í garðinum.
           today   have there no dogs   been out in garden-the
      b.  Allarhelst  hefur (*tað) eingin    keypt husið hjá Róa.
           probably  has  there nobody    bought house-the of Rói
 
Based on an extended set of data, including data from the other Scandinavian languages, Middle English and Belfast English, I will argue that the co-occurrence restriction only applies to associate subjects in potential subject licensing positions adjacent to the overt expletive.


Pål Kristian Eriksen (NTNU):
A journey into parallel universes: Counterfactual conditionals in Scandinavian languages
 
Counterfactual conditionals are conditional sentences which do not refer to the real world/to actual facts, but which describe what could have happened, if so-and-so had been a fact, like the English sentence in (1):
 
(1)  If Kennedy had survived, he would have been re-elected. 
 
In the introduction to my talk I will briefly present a tentative typology of such sentences, and  show how major European language areas, defined by this typology, form a borderline which cuts straight through Scandinavia. This has possibly lead to an exciting typological environment in this region, a hotbed for rarities and pecularities. 
       On the backdrop of this typology I will present three cases from different Scandinavian varieties, which have come to my attention as a NORMS post-doc, and which all show formal and/or theoretical aspects which have never been highlighted before:
 
1. Elfdalian is traditionally analysed as expressing counterfactuality through a subjunctive form of an auxiliary meaning ‘have’. I will argue that this analysis is incorrect, and that the auxiliary forms in question (like the singular form edd in (3) below) are actually the forms of an independent modal auxiliary, specialised for the expression of counterfactuality.
 
(2)  Um ig edd      werið  raik, edd      ig  byggt i   staðim          nų.
       if    I  AUX.SG been  rich  AUX.SG I   lived  in city.DEF.DAT now
       ‘If I had been rich, I would have lived in the city now.’
 
2. In a Swedish dialect of the Värmland region I discovered a (possibly formerly unknown?) counterfactual construction, which, depending on its analysis, is either quite interesting or extremely interesting! In the former case it expresses counterfactuality in a manner also found in Northern Norway, a rare type based on the present perfect tense. In the latter case it is a construction found nowhere else in Scandinavia. I will elaborate both analyses in my talk.
 
(3)  Tenk um det ha vurt  så! I  så  fall   ha  ja nog   tjänt  myck pänninger!
       think if  it  have been so in.that.case have I presumably earned much money
       ‘Imagine if it had been like that! If so, I think I would have earned a lot of money!’
 
3.Finland-Swedish dialects make a rare counterexample to the main global patterns established by the typology. In Finland-Swedish the auxiliary sku, the past tense form of the auxiliary ska, is required in both the subordinate and the main clause part of the conditional sentence, but, as I will show, the typology predicts that this should be (nearly) impossible.
 
(4) Om du  sku     ha   valt    det  andra numret,     sku   du   ha fått huvudvinsten.
     if you should have chosen ART other number.DEF should you have got main.prize.DEF
       ‘If you had chosen the other number, you would have won the main prize.’


Piotr Garbacz (Lund University):
Optional V°-to-I°-movement in Övdalian

In this talk I deal with V°-to-I°-movement in Övdalian. I show that despite the rich verbal agreement verb movement is optional in the language (or, for younger generations, sometimes even absent). This poses a challenge to the correlation between verbal morphology and syntactic movement known as Rich Agreement Hypothesis (Rorbacher 1999, Bobaljik 2002) so that neither the strong nor the weak version of it (as both versions predict that rich verbal agreement will cause verb movement to I°) can account for the situation observed in Övdalian. Further, Övdalian eludes also the theory of Bobalijk & Thráinsson (1998), which predicts that a language may have a split or an unsplit IP, and that certain properties are linked to the kind of IP that the language displays. Övdalian data give evidence for both split and unsplit IP at the same time, not only in respect to verb movement, but also in respect to other syntactical structures. In order to capture the situation in Övdalian, I utilize the idea of Alexiadou & Fanselow (2002), who claim that V°-to-I°-doesn’t depend of morphology in a direct way and that an additional movement operation must be present in a language in order for it to loose V°-to-I°-movement. I argue that such an operation is the placement of negation and sentential adverbs in a high negation position (HighNegP), i.e. before the subject. This placement blurs clues for verb movement to I° and causes the loss of it. Thus, V°-to-I°-movement and its loss are independent of morphology (the latter has already been proposed by Sundquist 2002).



Liliane Haegeman (University of Ghent):

In this paper I will be looking at the micro-syntax of negation in West Flemish. The talk will range over a number of issues, conceptual, empirical, diachronic and methodological. The presentation is based on joint work conducted with Raffaella Zanuttini in the 1990s, and more recently with Anne Breitbarth (University of Cambridge) and with Terje Lohndal (University of Maryland). (Read the rest of the abstract here)


Zakaris Svabo Hansen (University of Edinburgh & University of the Faroe Islands):
Syntactic change in Faroese: the view from Kindergarden

This talk will report from the ongoing project on variation and change in the syntax of Faroese. In the project we are looking at a syntactic change, either in progress or recently completed, in the position of the finite verb, akin to the change that happened in English from “she read never the books” to modern “she never read the books”. We have been looking at acceptability and, to a lesser extent, production by both adults and children (aged 5-10). For adults our results to date suggest that the change to the new adverb-verb order is almost complete. In this presentation, however, I will focus on the data from the children, where, contrary to our expectations, we have found relatively high acceptance and production of the “old” order among the pre-school children.


Gísli Rúnar Harðarson (University of Iceland):
Only One System at Work in Icelandic?
On the Binding of Pronominals in PPs

At first glance Icelandic pronominals may seem to comply with Binding Principle B, but upon scrutinizing larger amounts of data, one finds that Icelandic pronominals are not so ‘well behaved’. Some well known examples of these ‘ill-behaved’ pronominals include those within PPs with an object antecedent, like the following from Maling (1986):

(1) a. Ég tók kanínunai úr búrinu hennari.
         I took bunny-DEF out cage-DEF her
     b. Ég lagði drenginn-i við hlið systur hans-i.
         I laid boy-DEF by side sister his
        ‘I laid the boy beside his sister’

Some lesser known examples include those where pronominals within PPs have a subject antecedent, like these:

(2) a. [Stella vinkona]i kom ásamt foreldrum hennar-i og það var ljúft...
          Stella friend came with parents her and it was nice...
         ‘My friend Stella came with her parents, and it was nice...’
     b. Forsetahjónunum-i var vel fagnað í fyrstu opinberu heimsókn þeirra-i til Noregs.
         First couple-DEF was well cheered in first official visit their to Norway
         ‘The first couple were well received in their first official visit to Norway.’

These latter instances have not gotten as much attention in the past as the former instances (i.e., those with an object antecedent), although the latter will be the topic of this paper. Based on the framework used in this study, there appear to be three distinct systems at work governing pronominals in PPs in Icelandic, and the system applied appears to depend on the speaker. Speakers seem to be divided roughly into two main groups (though such clear divisions would be an oversimplification at best—speakers seem to utilize some variation of these systems, although they mostly follow one category). On one hand, there are those who tend towards the standard principle B, thus rejecting any c-commanding antecedent within its binding domain. On the other hand, there are those for whom some PPs form a binding domain, somewhat in accordance with Hestvik (1991) and Reinhart & Reuland (1993), for example. This latter group is, in turn, divided into two subgroups. On one hand there are those for whom objects alone may function as antecedents. And on the other, there are those for whom both subjects and objects may function as antecedents.


Anders Holmberg (Newcastle University
):
Another look at the role of inflection in Scandinavian syntax

In a series of works between 1987 and 1995 C. Platzack and A. Holmberg developed a theory according to which there are about ten ways that the Insular Scandinavian (ISc) languages differ from the Mainland Scandinavian (MSc) languages which are due to one parametric difference between the two groups of languages, to do with the features of I/T. The ten points of variation are: (1) Rich subject-verb agreement, (2) verb movement in embedded clauses, (3) oblique subjects, (4) Stylistic Fronting, (5) null expletives, (6) null generic subject pronoun, (7) the Transitive Expletive Construction, (8) heavy subject postposing, (9) subject relatives without a resumptive element, (10) VP-fronting. For all of them except (10) ISc has the value +, MSc the value –. The intuition that P&H tried to formalise was that richness of subject-verb agreement in a sense is the parameter from which the other properties would follow (hence the title of the 1995 book: The role of inflection in Scandinavian syntax). But with the theoretical tools available at the time they couldn’t express this intuition formally. Instead they ended up with a more abstract parameter: AGR (= the φ-features of I) does or does not have inherent nominative case (where the rich agreement would be an accompaniment of the inherent case, for not very clear reasons). (Read the full abstract here)


Janne Bondi Johannessen (University of Oslo):
The Nordic Dialect Corpus and Database

I will present two important resources that are being developed under the ScanDiaSyn umbrella as joint work work by many of the groups in SanDiaSy and NORMS. These two resources are: 1) The Nordic Dialect Corpus and 2) The Nordic Syntactic Judgement Database. For the corpus, Scandinavian linguists have done important recordings of speakers of dialects in their respective countries, and have transcribed these recordings into standard orthography (and in some cases also into a more phonetic transcription). The result of this is the first pan-Scandinavian dialect collection ever. For the database, Scandinavian linguists have presented carefully planned questionnaires containing sentences to be evaluated by informants, in order to find which syntactic phenomena exist where. The tecnical development has been carried out by the Text Laboratory in Oslo.

In the talk I will  give an overview of what the corpus and the database contain at the moment, and how they can be used.


Björn Lundquist (Aarhus University & University of Tromsø):
Squeezing patterns out of the ScanDiaSyn questionnaire – the case of Norwegian “quirky” reflexives

In this talk I will discuss different types of non-locally bound reflexives in Norwegian, and show how the results from the questionnaire used in the ScanDiaSyn fieldwork can help us understand the relations between different types of reflexives/anaphors.

During the last 20-25 years, linguists working on Norwegian have discovered that the anaphoric system in Norwegian (or variants of Norwegian) has certain properties that are not straightforwardly captured by the traditional binding theory (e.g. Chomsky 1981). I will in this talk focus on three quirks in the Norwegian reflexive system (listed below), that have further particular interest in that they are absent in e.g. most variants of Swedish. (Read the full abstract here.)


Mari Nygård (NTNU):
Analysis of discourse ellipses in spontaneous spoken Norwegian

Spontaneous spoken Norwegian displays a high frequency of discourse ellipses. Elements of different categories can be left out, in particular sentence initially. In this talk, I will present examples of several types of discourse ellipsis, and I will also propose an analysis for them. Common for the different types is that the elided elements appear to be syntactically active, entering into e.g. binding and agreement relations. I therefore suggest an analysis where formal features are assumed to be present in syntactic structure independently of lexical insertion, and where these features can be valued from contextual information from the C-I interface.


Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson (Lund University):
‘Natural’ null-arguments

This paper pursues the idea that null-arguments are derived without any statement or parameter, instead following ‘naturally’ from 3rd factor principles and effects (in the sense of Chomsky 2005). The paper thus contributes to the program of eliminating specific statements in grammar in favor of (interacting) general factors.

More specifically, the paper develops a theory of context-linking in terms of silent CP features or operators, where all referential pronouns, overt and silent, must match these features in order to be successfully context-linked (interpreted). On the approach pursued, radically silent arguments, like Germanic zero topics and controlled 3rd person null-subjects in Finnish, commonly have to raise across a lexical C (a complementizer or a V2 verb) into a CP domain for the purpose of successful context-linking (circumventing C-intervention), thereby showing A'-behavior not observed for the Romance type of pro drop.


Lars Steensland (Lund University):
Is there a vocative case in the Övdalian language?
With a short introduction to the situation and the structure of Övdalian

Northern Dalecarlia is culturally one of the most conservative regions of Sweden. The most conservative phenomenon in the parish Älvdalen is the language. The Övdalian language is traditionally—but in my opinion wrongly—considered a Swedish dialect. Its closest relative is Swedish, but it shares some traits with Norwegian. Övdalian has attracted the attention and interest of scholars and laymen for centuries. The first text of some length is a comedy, written almost 400 years ago, where the acting peasants speak Övdalian.

Today the language is spoken by about 2,500 people. Most of the adults, born and raised in Älvdalen (possibly with the exception of the central village), speak or understand Övdalian, but nowadays the children very seldom learn to speak it. Therefore the language is running the risk of disappearing in a few generations.

The Övdalian phonological system is very complicated. There are some archaic traits (e.g. the retention of nasal vowels, the consonants w, ð, the fricative pronunciation of /g/, and syllable length) in combination with several innovations (e.g. a series of secondary diphtongs plus a triphtong, affricates, apocope etc.).
 
Övdalian has retained the Indo-European three gender system and the old Germanic four cases: nominative, genetive, dative, and accusative. The verbs are inflected for number and person, essentially as in Old Swedish. Also in morphology you find innovations, e.g. a new way of forming the subjunctive. The syntax is different from Swedish syntax in many respects, including word order and negation.

It is known since the publication of Levander’s dissertation in 1909 that some personal names could have a distinct form in the vocative (Lass!, Niss!, Ann! ≠ nominative: Lasse, Nisse, Anna). In my presentation I will discuss the origin and age of those forms. There are reasons to believe that in older times it was possible to form such vocatives not only of proper names. Perhaps there has also existed a kind of hypocoristic vocative form. The most used form today in vocative situations is neither of the first type, nor the second, rather a form segmentally identical with the nominative, but with a different prosody (Lassé! ≠ nominative: Làsse, or Gunnár ≠ nominative Gúnnar). These forms have originally nothing to do with morphology—they are rather the effect of phrase rhytmics—, but I will try to argue that they are developing into morphological vocatives.

Welcome!

Download the abstract here


Øystein Alexander Vangsnes (University of Tromsø):
Official opening and status report on ScanDiaSyn/NORMS

In this opening talk I will summarize last year's activities under the ScanDiaSyn umbrella and present the plans for future activities.

2009 is the final year of the NordForsk network grant to ScanDiaSyn and 2010 will be the final year of NORMS, but we know already now that there will be project activity related to Scandinavian dialect syntax at least throughout 2012 due to three important grants which extend into that period:

1) The Research Council of Norway supports the project Norwegian Dialect Syntax (NorDiaSyn) in the period 2009-2012. This grant enables the completion of data collection in the Norwegian expanse and also the completion of the joint corpus and database. It also includes a postdoc position (Oslo) and a PhD position (Trondheim).

2) NOS-HS has granted their support to the two main workpackages of the project proposal Nordic Dialect Corpus and Cooperation (NorDiaCorp) in 2009-2012. One of these workpackages involves the collection of questionnaire data from at least half of the measure points where dialect recordings were made in the SweDia 2000 project. The other workpackage allows for two two-year positions at postdoc level for developing maps, overviews and other dissemination on the basis of all material collected in the various subprojects of ScanDiaSyn.

3) NordForsk has granted their support to a new three year network called Nordic Collaboration on LAnguage Variation Studies (N'CLAV). This network will represent an extension and expansion on the ScanDiaSyn/NORMS and NLVN networks, and although N'CLAV will not focus specifically on syntax nor on North Germanic exclusively, it will to a great extent build on experiences from the ScanDiaSyn/NORMS era. Crucially, the main activities in N'CLAV will be annual grand meetings and annual fieldwork excursions (of the NORMS type).

Importantly, the NorDiaSyn and NorDiaCorp grants together mean that we have seven person years at postdoc level devoted to disseminating scientific results from the data collection and build-up in ScanDiaSyn. This comes in addition to the intellectual power represented by all those participants in the collaboration who spend their own research time on the project, and there is thus a fair chance that ScanDiaSyn will continue to make an impact on dialectological and syntactic research on North Germanic in several years to come.


Øystein Alexander Vangsnes (University of Tromsø):
The polyfunctionality of which in Övdalian

The Övdalian lexical item ukin is cognate with English which and Scandinavian (h)vilken, and like its cognates it can be used (i) as a wh-determiner, i.e. to query for a token. But in addition to this ukin has a range of other uses: it has (ii) a predicative use (corresponding to English what ... like), (iii) a adnominal modifier use (corresponding to English what kind of), (iv) a pronominal use in which it queries for human referents (i.e. corresponding to English who), and (v) in its neuter form, ukað, it can be used to introduce yes/no-questions, both matrix and embedded ones. This range of syntactic functions is illustrated by the examples in (1) to (5).

(1)    Ukin                     bil  ir denn?        (determiner use)
        WHICH.M.SG.NOM car is yours     
        'Which car is yours?'
(2)    Ukų                      sir     å    aut?     (predicative use)
         WHICH.F.SG.NOM looks she out
        'What does she look like?'
(3)    Ukan                     bil  ar     du?      (modifier use)
         WHICH.M.SG.NOM car have  you
        'What car do you have?'
(4)    Ukan    al     du   råk   i  Stokkol?     (pronominal use)
        WHICH shall you meet in Stockholm
        'Who will you meet in Stockholm?'
(5)    Ukað     ir   du  trät    (eld)?             (question particle use)
         WHICH are you tired    or
        'Are you tired?'
(6)    Ig wet   it    ukað     å    ir  ungg  eld gåmål.
        I   know not WHICH she is  young or  old
        'I don't know if she is young or old.'

These matters were investigated during the NORMS fieldwork in Älvdalen in 2007. Not unexpectedly, for most of the query types there exist alternative ways of forming them, but although there are some factual uncertainties pertaining to the modifier use of ukin, there is no doubt that this lexical item is quite a polyfunctional element in the grammar of Övdalian. This is a fair statement even though ukin cannot be used as a relativizer, the way English which can, and neither as manner how, the way several adnominal wh-items can in other Scandinavian varieties.

In this talk I will pick up on two issues that arise from the behavior of ukin. First, from a comparative perspective it is interesting to discuss whether the spread of syntactic functions related to ukin follows a certain pattern, i.e. whether the syntactic uses form a conceptual/semantic continuum. Second, I will discuss how to account for the status of ukin within the grammar.


Maria Vilkuna (Research Central for the Languages of Finland):
FinDiaSyn: Regional Aspect of Finnish Syntax

The presentation will briefly report what is currently going on in the project and then focus on the available corpora and ways of using them. This will be illustrated by a case study on 3rd person plural verb inflection in Finnish dialects. This is an area of great variation, with contradictory leveling pressures from the standard system and sociolinguistically prestigious varieties of present-day spoken language, but it can also maintained that in certain dialects areas, the use of 3rd person plural (instead of the defailt 3rd singular) has quite particular functions. The phenomenon of subject doubling will also be relevant in this context.


Det humanistiske fakultet, Universitetet i Tromsø, 9037 Tromsø TLF: 776 44240
Oppdatert av forskar Øystein A. Vangsnes den 24.08.2009 17:35
Ansvarlig redaktør: fakultetsdirektør Jørgen Fossland


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