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Scandiasyn-bloggen i mai 2009

Fredag 29. mai The 24th Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop has been taking place yesterday and today in Brussels at the Center for Research in Syntax, Semantics and Phonology of the Catholic University. When taking a look at the program it's quite fascinating to see how many of the talks employ a microcomparative perspective. There is no doubt that the focus on syntactic dialectal variation during the recent decade is now making a noticable impact also in theoretical syntax and it seems that the days where one mainly would compare structures of various written, codified (national) languages are gone. NORMS/ScanDiaSyn is represented at CGSW 24 by Höskuldur Thráinsson (Iceland) as one of the invited speakers and by Tarald Taraldsen (Tromsø) and a joint paper by Kristine Bentzen and Thorbjörg Hróarsdóttir (both Tromsø). Sigga Sigurðjónsdóttir (Iceland) is an alternate speaker with a paper co-authored with Joan Maling. The Tromsø delegates will propose that the next CGSW be held in Tromsø June next year. If the offer is accepted we hope to be able to hold the workshop in conjunction with next year's Grand Meeting which will also serve as the grand finale of NORMS (for which the funding will stop by the end of 2010). – Øystein   Onsdag 20. mai Handout (Photo: GHH) Björn Lundquist defended his doctoral dissertation, Nominalizations and Participles in Swedish, today in a public defense at the University of Tromsø. Opponents at the defense were Assistant Professor Rajesh Bhatt of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Professor Elisabet Engdahl of the University of Gothenburg. Third member of the committee was researcher Øystein A. Vangsnes. Björn giving his trial lecture (Photo: GHH) After first giving a trial lecture on the assigned topic ‘Participles in a cross-linguistic perspective’ Björn presented the main findings and results of his thesis. Then followed the critiques from and discussion with the two opponents, interluded by a lunch break and an ex auditorio from the third committee member.  Björn with committee, CASTL director Marit Westergaard and Dean Rolf Gaasland (Photo: GHH) People gathered in a warm and cosy atmosphere in the afternoon at Prestvannet to celebrate Björn. The festivities will certainly continue into the bright night at Løkta.  Congratulations, Björn! - Gunnar Hrafn   Måndag 18. mai The NORMS Inner Scandinavia team. (Photo: Tania Strahan/S. Timer) The NORMS fieldwork in "Inner Scandinavia" two weeks ago generated a fair amount of news items both on the Norwegian and the Swedish side of the border. On the Norwegian side, Glåmdalen, a newspaper based in Solør, published an interview with our local contact in advance of our visit in Kirkenær. The fieldwork at Stange library was documented by an enthusiastic Stange-dialect speaking journalist in Hamar Arbeiderblad. The visit at Sørskogbygda school was covered by the Elverum-based newspaper Østlendingen. On the Swedish side of the border we got an article in Nya Wermlandstidningen and another in Värmlands Folkblad. In addition, Marit appeared on Sveriges Radio Värmland. - Marit and Arne   Torsdag 14. mai Feltarbeid på Inderøya i Nord-Trøndelag, 23. april 2009: Torsdag 23. april var Tor (A. Åfarli) og jeg (Christine B. Østbø) klare til å dra på feltarbeid til Inderøy i trivelige Nord-Trøndelag. Informantene var skaffet uka før gjennom en nær kjenning av meg, som hadde vært i et trivelig 60-årslag med mange trivelige inderøyninger. Dagen var for ei som kom fra vinterlandet Tromsø, vidunderlig med blå himmel, sol og mange varmegrader, og Trøndelag viste seg fra sin aller beste side. Våronna var i full gang (i hvert fall på Frosta), gresset så å si grønt og bjørka på bristepunktet. Vi møttes på Åsen, der veien til Frosta tar av fra E6-en, og kjørte i duvende trønderlandskap forbi Skogn, Levanger og Verdal før vi kom til Inderøy kommune og Røra, der vi svingte av mot selve Inderøy. (Røra er vel mest kjent for Røra fabrikker som blant annet produserer jus og syltetøy.) Vi kjørte forbi tettstedet Straumen, og på vei ut mot Utøya hvor vi skulle treffe informantene, passerte vi de to kjente attraksjonene Jægtvolden og gamle Sakshaug kyrkje. Nåtildags er Inderøya også kjent for å være et kulturelt sentrum i Innherred/Nord-Trøndelag med sanselige opplevelser for både øre, øyne og gane (og sikkert litt til). View Larger Map Opptakene skulle foregå på Utøy bedehus, og klingende pianotoner møtte oss da vi gikk inn – den eldre mannlige informanten var allerede på plass. En drøy time senere kom også den eldre kvinnelige informanten. De to yngre informantene hadde ikke anledning denne dagen, så de må tas senere. Begge informantene snakker ifølge dem selv opprinnelig inderøydialekt. For nordtrøndere flest er fortidsformen hi av verbet ha et av de mest karakteristiske trekkene til inderøydialekten. Andre interessante opplysninger om dialekten følger her, med noen av resultatene fra spørreskjemaet. Tor A. Åfarli med informant fra Inderøya på Utøy bedehus. (Foto: Christine B. Østbø) Ikke uventet godtok begge informantene manglende V2 i spørresetninger (typen Ka du heite?). Begge synes også at det er helt ok å plassere negasjonen mellom infinitivsmerket og verbet (typen …å itj komm…), og begge var litt mer skeptiske til typen …itj å komm…, uten at heller ikke denne siste ordstillingen ble avvist. Når det gjelder ekstraksjon fra subjektsposisjonen i en leddsetning, mener begge det er helt ok å utelate subjunksjonen i slike tilfeller (typen Kæm trur du har gjort det hær), men like bra er det også å bruke som i slike tilfeller (typen Kæm trur du som har gjort det hær). Men m.h.t. at var det stor forskjell på informantene. Den kvinnelige informanten syntes også typen Kæm trur du at har gjort det hær var helt fin, mens den mannlige informanten avviste denne helt. Fri dativ ble ikke møtt med begeistring av noen av informantene, selv om den mannlige informanten var ørlite mer velvillig enn den kvinnelige. Et litt artig mønster når det gjaldt ubestemt artikkel i interaksjon med attributivt adjektiv: Ingen likte Vi såg æn svart æn hest i det hele tatt, men begge syntes derimot at Så svart æn hest har æ aldri sett før var helt grei, og Æn så svart æn hest har æ aldri sett før mente den mannlige informanten var helt ubrukelig, mens den kvinnelige mente den var helt ok! Begge informantene har intuisjoner om dativ og skiller mellom akkusativ og dativ i tilsted vs. påsted, og de er helt klare på at bare det duger som formelt subjekt. De var også svært velvillig innstilt til ulike rekkefølger når det gjaldt svake pronomen i interaksjon med negasjon; alle disse tre møstrene godtas: Derfor las’n’itj’hu, Derfor las’n’hu’itj, Derfor las’itj’n’hu. – Christine   Måndag 11. mai Eva's report from the Inner Scandinavia fieldwork: Eva Engels with an informant in Stange. (Photo: Maia Andréasson) I was testing negative objects and expletive constructions. I haven't had a closer look at the data yet, but what struck me while collecting the them was that several informants marginally accepted transitive expletive constructions like "I går har det mange utlendinger kjøpt brunost", which are claimed in the literature to be ungrammatical in Mainland Scandinavian. However, I'm not sure how to deal with these results as some informants said that they gave the above sentence 4 points (on a scale from 1[=bad] to 5[=good]) as there was only the little word "det" too much. When they were explicit about this, I had the chance to explain that it was not only a question of whether they could understand what the sentence meant but also of whether they could say it in this way.) On the other hand, a supposedly perfect sentence like "På festen sa Pål ingenting" didn't get the full score as some informants didn't like the adverbial in topic position, showing how important it is to test sentences in the right context. – Eva   Torsdag 7. mai Tania Strahan (right) and Birger Nesholen (left) outside Norsk Skogfinsk Museum. (Photo: Jeffrey Parrott) Today was the last operative day of the NORMS "Inner Scandinavia" fieldwork. We got up early and drove to Svullrya /'svulri:a/, where Birger Nesholen, director for Norsk skogfinsk museum, guided us through and told us a lot about the Finnish immigration to Finnskogen (the forests on the border between Sweden and Norway), and also about the linguistic history of the area – how the Finns managed to keep their language intact for several centuries, until their Finnish finally gave way to a form of Norwegian with clear Finnish substrate features. When we were done there, we travelled to Sahlbergsgården for lunch. Underway, Marit received a call from a journalist from Sveriges Radio Värmland, and she was interviewed when we arrived Sahlbergsgården. We had a delicious buffet with salad, meat, fish, knäckebröd, bread and lingondryck. Today's fieldwork commenced at Stjerneskolan (The Star School!) in Torsby in the early afternoon, where Anna Stina Kapla (in absentia) and Birgitta Sundberg were ready with 12 locals, and the usual load of delicious cakes, biscuits and coffee for our last "Inner Scandinavia" session. We have to mention the huge box of oat biscuits they brought, a local specialty made with roasted oat meal. They were absolutely fantastic! Åshild Søfteland interviewing two informants in Torsby. (Photo: Linda Bengtsson/Värmlands Folkblad) Two journalists from Nya Wermlands Tidning and Värmlands Folkblad were high and low on top of tables and chairs in the room, interviewing people and taking pictures from many funny angles. It will be interesting to see the results of their work. Having finished at Stjerneskolan, a short rain storm almost blew the roof off the school, before all of a sudden the sun started shining. We drove a few hundred meters to Hotel Örnen, where we had a little rest before dinner at Faktoriet, a pictoresque restaurant at the shore of Lake Fryken, in the immediate neighborhood of a huge sawmill. We had salmon with potatoes and salad, rounded it off with an ice cream, and now we're discussing methodology at the debriefing. The first individual reports from the fieldwork, in addition to Pål's notes yesterday, are ready, see below. More will follow soon. - Marit and Arne The visit by the NORMS researchers to Torsby advertised as the top story in the newspaper Värmlands Folkblad – alongside other breaking news. (Photo: Marit Julien) Report from Maia Andréasson: Maia Andréasson browsing her pics framed by the doorway of a timber wall in Torsby. (Photo: Jeffrey Parrott) Just as in Vestjylland in Denmark January 2008, I have been investigating pronominal object shift, focussing on the difference in position for objects that are coreferential with NPs and objects coreferential with clauses or VPs. The findings in Inner Scandinavia so far are not surprising. The Norwegian informants and the Swedish Torsby informants accept det in situ to a greater extent in declarative sentences than the Danes in Vestjylland. For this reason, I choose to focus on two details in my blog report. The first is that the very first informant I met claimed that there was a difference in meaning between the two following sentences: a. Hun sa at Ole var syk, men jeg trodde ikke det. b. Hun sa at Ole var syk, men jeg trodde det ikke. In sentence (a), where det is in situ, the informant claimed that the thing denied is Ole’s being ill, "he is probably not that ill after all", whereas sentence (b) means that “hun is lying to me about Ole’s being ill”, more like the meaning of Jeg trodde ikke på det. When asked about the meaning of the sentences, also other informants claimed that the difference was there. There was also a third word order option: c. Hun sa at Ole var syk, men det trodde jeg ikke. Most informants that I asked claimed that the meaning of the (c) sentence, was identical to the meaning of (a). I would very much like to know if the readers of this blog have the same intuition. The second thing I would like to make a note of is more methodological. It is a very problematic task to get informants to evaluate sentences when it is not the grammaticality that is at stake. Most of the sentences that I present are indeed grammatical, but they are better or worse – or even impossible – in a certain context. And sometimes when there are many sentences to evaluate the informants get tired and tend to accept almost anything. To prevent this, I started to add some “coffee bean sentences”, with a clear choice between the grammatical and the ungrammatical, in between the more difficult sentences. This I did in order to freshen up the grammatical nose of the informant (cf. sniffing on coffee beans while testing out different perfumes). It seemed to work fine. –Maia Report from Tania Strahan: OMG! LDR! Tania Strahan interviewing a Torsby informant. (Photo: Linda Bengtsson/Värmlands Folkblad) I have two ares of interest for this fieldwork trip: the presence of long-distance reflexives, and expletive objects. I have half a dozen informants from the Norwegian towns of Stange, Sørskogsbygda and Kirkenær who have LDR, including over a finite clause boundary. One informant even spontaneously produced an LDR out of a 'fordi' ('because') adjunct clause, although I am going to have a close listen to the recording to make absolutely sure! A single informant in Torsby allowed some LDR out of a relative clause, as is found in standard Norwegian, but the interesting Icelandic-style and Faroese-style LDR was completely absent in Torsby. Regarding the dummy objects, again there was more variation on the Norwegian side of the border than the Swedish, although I need to look more carefully at the data. Essentially, the Icelandic-style dummy objects do not seem to be grammatical in any of the Inner Scandinavian dialects tested, which is as expected. Finally, the running has been lovely. Hamar had an easy run down to the foreshore of Lake Mjøsa, where there were lots of lovely paths beside the lake, and the Viking Ship stadium was an easy reference to make it home again. Kirkenær to Sandstad was a lovely run through freshly ploughed fields, across a wide river hedged in by an array of trees in every shade of green and adorned with islands and sparkling reflections, and home again. I'm looking forward to my run in Sweden tomorrow, and if the rain stays away, I fully expect it to be equally lovely. – Tania Report from Henrik Jørgensen: Henrik Jørgensen with a Kirkenær informant. (Photo: Maia Andréasson) My fieldwork project has been dealing with pronominal mismatch, i.e. oblique pronouns in subject positions (or at least in subject-related positions), and nominative pronouns in object positions. Both types of mismatch are well attested throughout Mainland Scandinavia; the oblique pronouns in subject positions concentrating in Denmark and spreading into Norway, the nominative pronouns in oblique positions found in Northern Sweden and the Swedish-speaking parts of Finland. Inner Scandinavia was an interesting area to work in because there was a strong possibility that both types of mismatch might coincide, just like they once did in Västra Nyland (Finland), according to Lundström 1939. In fact, already at this preliminary point my investigations seem to indicate that both directions of variation do exist. The mismatch of oblique forms into nominative was possible in Hamar, but hardly anything except comparations (“bigger than me”) was accepted closer to the border or in Sweden. The mismatch of nominative forms was traceable in the whole area, but it will take closer investigation into the answers to make sure how fireproof the answers really were. An interesting feature of the field work is long distance topicalisation. Usually believed to be an option in all Scandinavia, many informants reacted negatively to such examples. The reason to question is that the extracted topicalised subject in Danish will have oblique case. I have tried to collect material on this, but it is not clear whether there are any clear results on this in the material. – Henrik   Onsdag 6. mai Dialect Workshop in "Inner Scandinavia" Since Monday night the following people have been underway in Hedmark, so far having done fieldwork in Stange, Sørskogbygda and Kirkenær (see map): Maia Andréasson (Gothenburg) Eva Engels (Aarhus/Oslo) Pål Kristian Eriksen (Trondheim) Karen Th. Hagedorn (Aarhus) Henrik Jørgensen (Aarhus) Marit Julien (Lund) Arne Martinus Lindstad (Oslo) Jeffrey Parrott (Copenhagen) Åshild Søfteland (Oslo) Karine Stjernholm (Oslo) Tania Strahan (Reykjavík) Stange informant and Marit Julien. (Photo: Maia Andréasson) The crew gathered at Vikingskipet Motell & Vandrerhjem on Monday evening for a quick briefing. On Tuesday morning we took off for Hedmark University College in Hamar, where Tormod Stauri guided us through some aspects of the local dialects. After lunch at the college, we went to Stange, where we arrived at around 2 pm. We installed ourselves at the local library. At the library, we did the usual stuff with interviews and questionnaires. We also did some recordings for the database. We haven't heard through the recordings yet, but at least one dative form was observed during the interviews, so that's something! Hamar Arbeiderblad, a local newspaper, interviewed us and some of the Stange participants, resulting in a nice story in the paper on Wednesday. Hamar cathedral ruins. (Photo: Maia Andréasson) The library staff provided us with loads of coffee to keep us and the participants going for three long but fun hours. When we were done, we walked up to Tingvold, a local cafe, where we had dinner. After dinner, we took a little ride by car through the northern parts of the municipality of Stange , enjoying the breathtaking view over Mjøsa in beautiful sunshine. "-F****ing beautiful!," according to Tania the Aussie. We stopped to have a look at the very old local church in Stange (1250-), then drove slowly through the farming fields back to Hamar where we stopped again at Domkirkeodden, where we took a quick walk around the old middle age church ruins (which are now englassed to protect them from further erosion). For some, the evening ended there, others went to Hamar city for coffee, ice cream, pastry and perhaps a beer or two. Jeff and informants in Sørskogbygda (Photo: Maia Andréasson) Wednesday morning we drove to Sørskogbygda, east of Elverum (or Leiret as the locals call it), to Sørskogbygda school. The school head master Ove Grimstad had arranged a lineup of locals and pupils from the schools to participate in our investigations. We did the usual stuff with our questionnaires and the recording equipment. Afterwards we had the most delicious lunch prepared by the pupils. We all agreed we had had the best meal so far during our trip. In beautiful sunshine after lunch, we drove further south through Solør, arriving at Skaslien Guest House in Kirkenær in the early afternoon. Here our local cooperator, Ingunn Langmoen, had rounded up a crowd of informants, and the work was carried out as usual. Of no less importance is the fact that Skaslien has one of the best restaurants in Norway, which they proved when it was time for dinner. Juniper berry marinated elk was just one of the highlights. With a couple of glasses of wine to accompany dinner, the scheduled debriefing proceeded in quite a relaxed atmosphere. Tomorrow morning, we're headed for Torsby just across the border to Sweden. Stay tuned for updates. The participants will provide individual reports on their more linguistic findings in due course. - Marit and Arne Some notes from Pål: Pål Kr. Eriksen and some Inner Scandinavian artistery. (Photo: Jeffrey Parrott) I am doing research on counterfactual conditionals, i.e. conditional sentences concerning events that go against the actual facts, or at least events that are highly unlikely to be true, like “If Kennedy had survived, he would have been reelected”. In Norwegian two patterns are held to be possible: Hvis NP hadde V’et, (så) hadde NP V’et or Hvis NP hadde V’et, (så) ville NP V’et, i.e the main clause verb either appears in the past perfect, or with the modal auxiliary ville. I am checking whether informants prefer one of these patterns above the other, and/or if they are distributed according to different subtypes of counterfactual conditionals and related counterfactual sentence types. I am also checking whether informants operate with tense distinctions of counterfactual events, e.g. whether there is a distinction between a counterfactual event in the present and a counterfactual event in the past (English makes such a distinction between “If I had any money, I would buy you a beer” (=> counterfactual present) and “If I’d had any money, I would’ve bought you a beer” (=> counterfactual past)). In addition I am trying to check how the informants express future tense sentences, and if that has any influence on their choice of expression formats in counterfactuals. My questionnaire consists of a number of sentences, from each of which a crucial portion is lacking, and where I ask the informants to make up phrases to fill in the missing parts. The sentences are formulated so as to force the informant to use a counterfactual expression (or other wanted data), like “If I had won the lottery last week, ....................”. So – what have I found so far? First of all, the informants almost unanimously choose the past perfect-pattern instead of the ville-pattern. The sole exception was a child in primary school, who clearly preferred the opposite. Another possible generational difference, is that older informants do not show any strong tendency to mark tense distinctions in counterfactual conditionals, but the few children I have had as informants, tended to mark this more strongly. Finally, it should be mentioned that the interview technique I have opted for this time (cf. the remarks about the questionnaire above) seems to function perfectly – apart from in one respect: It seems as good as impossible to elicit examples of future tense expressions, and no matter how I reformulate the questions involved, the informants only use the present tense form of the verb (which can cover both present and future readings in Norwegian) instead of using an explicit future tense expression. Thus I have gotten absolutely no good data on that particular topic. That’s all for now, now it’s time for a biscuit and another informant! – Pål