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On the history of definiteness marking in Scandinavian1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2009

JAN TERJE FAARLUND
JAN TERJE FAARLUND*
Affiliation:
Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature, University of Oslo
*
Author's address: Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1020Blindern, NO-0315Oslo, Norway[email protected]
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Abstract

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 gamle 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 (þau in stóru skip ‘those the large ships’). Later the independent definite article inn was lost and replaced by the demonstrative þann>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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , November 2009 , pp. 617 - 639
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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Footnotes

[1]

I want to thank Werner Abraham, Hans-Olav Enger, Volker Gast, Elly van Gelderen, Terje Lohndal and two anonymous JL referees for valuable comments and suggestions. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the workshop New Perspectives on Morphological Change at the Freie Universität Berlin in October 2006, and at the workshop Issues in Comparative Germanic Morphosyntax at the Università di Napoli “Federico II” in May 2007. I am grateful for the input from the participants at those events.

References

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