The article presents a real-time study of standardization and regionalization processes with respect to the use of past participles of strong verbs in the western part of Denmark. Analyses of a large corpus of recordings of informants from two localities show that the use of the dialectal en form of the past participle suffix has been in decline during the last 30 years. The en forms are replaced by three other forms, one of which is (partly) dialectal, one regional and one standard Danish. The study indicates that a regionalization process has taken place prior to the time period studied, but that it has now been overtaken by a Copenhagen-based standardization process. The study also shows interesting differences between the two localities, arguably due to the geographical location and size, and to the status of the different participle forms in the traditional local dialects.

A multiple methods approach was applied to the study of morphology on the processing of lexical items in Swedish. Data from slips-of-the-tongue, agrammatic speech production, agrammatic oral reading, and lexical decision experiments were used. The results indicate that whole word processing as well as morphological processing takes place in the different types of tasks. The type of processing seems to vary along a continuum, with whole word processing as the most commonly applied type in automatized and relatively simple processing (such as lexical decision for common Swedish words), whereas signs of morpheme-based processing appear less often, and perhaps in less automatized tasks (such as agrammatic speech production).

This paper discusses telicity and perfectivity in Estonian. Neither of these categories corresponds exactly to the Estonian object case alternation, which is argued to reflect predicate or clause aspectual properties and not the NP-related properties of objects. The aim of this account is to accommodate the systematic compatibility of verb classes with certain clausal aspectual object case marking patterns. The paper proposes a way of understanding the interaction between verbal and clausal aspect in terms of boundedness and formalizes it in the framework of Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG). The features of verbs and case markers determine the clausal aspect from different constituents at the syntactic level of constituent structure. The information is unified at another syntactic level, functional structure.

Synchronic alternations involving similar types of consonant/consonant metathesis are examined in Faroese and Lithuanian from both formal and functional perspectives. It is argued that by taking into account speech perception-based phonotactic constraints, we are able to gain insight into why metathesis occurs. The proposed formal account of the process is of particular theoretical interest given the apparent opacity involving the interaction of metathesis and place assimilation in Faroese. While straightforward in a serial-based account, this type of opacity has posed a challenge to Optimality Theory requiring the inclusion of additional formal devices into the theory. As we show, however, by modifying one assumption concerning the realization of the sequence, this additional formal machinery is rendered unnecessary. Opacity involving Faroese metathesis turns out to be an artifact of a particular phonological analysis.

A central objective of this paper is to show how much variation there is across Scandinavian with respect to the morphosyntactic form of interrogative noun phrases. The present paper focuses on three main types of such DPs: (i) phrases involving a cognate of English which, (ii) phrases involving the same element as manner ‘how’ (which is morphologically complex and distinct from degree ‘how’), and (iii) phrases involving ‘what’ with or without an overt kind noun. With respect to all of these different types of noun-phrase-internal wh-expressions an interesting pattern seems to emerge: there are reasons to hold that adnominal wh-expressions start out as modifiers, yielding kind-querying noun phrases, and then develop into determiners, yielding token-querying noun phrases. Although further investigations will have to determine whether such a developmental path (or cycle) is quite general in nature, it can be made perfect sense of with reference to grammaticalization triggered by wh-movement which operates on a DP-structure that distinguishes modification from determination in such a way that the locus of determination is higher than modification.

The present paper deals with the syntactic status of the indefinite NP in Norwegian existential-presentative constructions with a formal subject det in a typological perspective. It is argued that the NP in question is identifiable as a syntactic object both on account of its behaviour and control properties and its coding properties. Moreover, this analysis parallels Itkonen's description of “existential subjects” in Finnish as belonging to an “inverted ergative system”, which is clearly relationally different from the two kinds of ergativity systems described elsewhere in the literature.

Since Maling's (1980) study of embedded verb-second, Icelandic Stylistic Fronting has been an extensively studied aspect of Icelandic syntax. It is widely regarded as an optional fronting operation which moves an ordinarily post-verbal constituent to the pre-verbal domain just in case there is a subject gap. In this study, variationist methodology is employed to study quantitatively the conditioning effects of several syntactic and prosodic factors on Stylistic Fronting in two transcribed corpora of spoken Icelandic. The results show that some grammatical categories favor fronting more than others, and that fronting is affected by the number of syllables in the frontable constituent and the material surrounding the landing site. This lends support to the long-standing intuition that prosodic factors influence the choice to use Stylistic Fronting (which is syntactically optional), while at the same time suggests avenues for further research in addressing certain issues in the syntax of Stylistic Fronting, such as the ‘accessibility hierarchy’.

This paper provides evidence that medial adjunct PPs in English are possible. On the basis of corpus data, it is shown that sentence-medial adjunct PPs are not unacceptable and are attested. Our corpus data also reveal a sharp asymmetry between negative and non-negative adjunct PPs. The analysis of the corpus revealed the following pattern: Non-negative adjunct PPs such as at that time resist medial position and instead tend to be postverbal; negative adjunct PPs such as at no time appear medially rather than postverbally. In the second part of the paper, we broaden the empirical domain and include negative complement PPs in the discussion. It is shown that when it comes to the licensing of question tags, English negative complement PPs, which are postverbal, pattern differently from postverbal negative adjunct PPs. That is, sentences with a postverbal negative adjunct PP pattern with negative sentences in taking a positive question tag, while sentences containing a postverbal negative argument PP pattern with affirmative sentences in taking a negative tag. To account for the observed adjunct–argument asymmetry in the licensing of question tags, we propose that clauses are typed for polarity and we explore the hypothesis that a polarity head in the left periphery of the clause is crucially involved in the licensing of sentential negation.

This special issue includes a collection of papers on language and intersubjctivity. There are two paradigms in linguistic approaches to intersubjectivity; cognitive linguistics and interactional linguistics, but these two paradigms hardly ever meet. This is due to the fact that these paradigms have opposing views on cognition and mental events. However, both these paradigms draw from phenomenology: whereas cognitive linguistic approaches to intersubjectivity have their basis on Husserl's philosophy, interactional linguistics is influenced by ethnomethodological conversation analysis and the philosophy of Schutz. Despite the apparent differences between these approaches, there are convergences, too. Moreover, both approaches are needed for a full account of language and human intersubjectivity.

The article describes new dialect formation in Høyanger, a small industrial town located in the county of Sogn og Fjordane on the west coast of Norway, where an aluminium industry was established in 1916. Four generations of dialect development are studied from a synchronic and a diachronic point of view, based on older real-time data as well as new fieldwork. Qualitative interviews with informants at different ages shed light on linguistic choices made in complex dialect contact situations, particularly at the decisive second stage of koineization. Local and social embeddings are essential for the interpretations of the results because the linguistic changes seem to be dependent on dynamic relations between language and society. The results are interesting as a contribution to recent debate on the role of identity and social factors in new dialect formation. Related to more general processes of linguistic change, the article also discusses further development of the focused dialect.

This paper argues that there is a phonological opposition between falling and non-falling utterance-terminal tunes in East Norwegian intonation. East Norwegian intonational foci are characterized by a rising pitch movement and there is no way that you can raise the pitch even further to express “rising intonation”. What you obtain instead is a distinction between a focal rise followed by a terminal fall in pitch and a focal rise without a subsequent falling terminal. The falling vs. non-falling terminal contrast is utilized differently in Intonation Units (IUs) with just one Intonational Phrase (IP) than in IUs with more than one Intonational Phrase. In the former type of IU structure a falling terminal constrains the illocutionary potential of the communicative act; in the latter type the falling terminal adds an attitudinal bias, without constraining the illocutionary potential. While most non-falling and falling terminals in connected discourse can ultimately be related to the difference between “openness” and “finality”, respectively, this intonational contrast is shown to have a seemingly quite different function in imperatives.

Recent papers by Cathey and Demers (1975, 1976, 1977, ms) have incorporated an analysis of Old Icelandic phonology in which purely phonetically conditioned rules of i-Umlaut and u-Umlaut are crucial not only to the analysis itself, but to the theoretical implications theauthors draw from that analysis. Synchronically, however, the non exceptional application of i-Umlaut is restricted to just four morpho-syntactic classes: athematic and j-thematic verbs in the preterite subjunctive, j-thematic verbs in the non-preterite, adjectives with a consonant-initial comparative suffix, and athematic feminine or plural r-stem nouns. Historical u-Umlaut continues to round a to Q before u in the next syllable even in literary Old Icelandic, but its application is also morphologically induced, viz. a → Q in all feminines, plurals, and u-stems not followed by a vocalic suffix. All intraparadigmatic umlaut alternations are covered by these morphologizations, which in turn obviate the abstractions proposed by Cathey and Demers.

In this article we try to determine the diachronic origin of a few sentential particles attested in some North-Eastern Italian dialects on the basis of their syntactic properties. The particles we consider are associated with specific clause types and can only appear in matrix non-declarative clauses; they generally occur in sentence-final position, and only some of them can follow the wh-item in an interrogative clause. They display the typical properties of X°-elements, and can therefore be analysed as functional heads of the CP layer; we present an analysis exploiting movement of the wh-item or of the whole clause to the specifier corresponding to the head occupied by the particle. The different distribution that characterizes the two main types of particles seems to depend on whether they derive etymologically from pronouns or from adverbs; the new properties developed in the grammaticalization process suggest that when an element is reanalysed as a functional category, it can further acquire the value of functional projections merged close to it in the structure.

This article explores intraindividual microvariation in dialect syntax. We argue that in many cases the speaker has internalized a different (sub)grammar for each dialectal variety, in line with the hypothesis of universal bilingualism and parallel grammars argued for by Roeper (1999 et seq.). We discuss the question of how we can distinguish parallel grammars from optionality within one grammar, suggesting that the identification of correlating contextual factors might be a promising criterion. However, we also explore a more subtle type of variation, namely cases where a standard variety influences a potentially more vulnerable non-standard variety in a way that makes it exceedingly difficult for the language user and even for a trained linguist to discern what is what. We discuss whether or not these properties should be analysed as properties of another subgrammar (the standard grammar) or as fully integrated (albeit acquired) properties of the non-standard dialect.

Certain word order facts in Icelandic have been claimed, by several linguists, to provide evidence that Icelandic has no VP constituent (in s-structure) in sentences where the main verb is finite. If correct, this entails that Icelandic phrase structure is not always binary branching, contradicting the hypothesis that all phrase structure is binary branching. It is shown to be incorrect. A new theory of Icelandic sentence structure is presented, based on Platzack (in press), but strictly observing binary branching. The theory presented is shown to be empirically more adequate than the less constrainedĀ-nary branching theories.

The purpose of this article is to show that Norwegian has complex predicates, in which two verbs are reanalyzed as one predicate in a monoclausal structure, comparable to complex predicates that have been proposed for other languages. The central evidence comes from the construction called the long passive, in which the subject of the first verb is typically the patient of the second verb. Norwegian long passives often have passive morphology on both verbs, and I consider this a case of verbal feature agreement. The article also discusses evidence for complex predicates from active sentences.

Turkish expresses adverbial subordination predominantly by means of converb clauses. These are headed by nonfinite verbs, i.e. converbs, which have a converb suffix attached to the stem. The different converbs express different aspectual relations between the subordinate and the superordinate clause, and they can be modifying or non-modifying. We analyse data from speakers of Turkish as a heritage language in Germany and the U.S. as well as monolingual speakers of Turkish in Turkey. The data come from two age groups: adults and adolescents. We show that unlike in canonical Turkish, converbs in heritage Turkish can be multifunctional, meaning that they can express both simultaneity and causality, for example. Furthermore, we show that converbs in heritage Turkish can be both modifying and non-modifying. As possible factors which might be responsible for such variation, we discuss language contact, sociolinguistic differences between the speaker communities (Germany vs. the U.S.) and age of the speakers.

This paper investigates the status of the lexicon and the possibilities for expressing lexical generalizations in the paradigm of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). We illustrate that the architecture readily supports the use of implicational principles to express generalizations over a class of word objects. A second kind of lexical generalizations expressing relations between classes of words is often expressed in terms of lexical rules. We show how lexical rules can be integrated into the formal setup for HPSG developed by King (1989, 1994), investigate a lexical rule specification language allowing the linguist to only specify those properties which are supposed to differ between the related classes, and define how this lexical rule specification language is interpreted. We thereby provide a formalization of lexical rules as used in HPSG.

This paper argues for a unified analysis of mainland Scandinavian pronominal object shift and Icelandic full NP shift. Building on data showing the impact of accessibility on object placement in Swedish, Danish and Icelandic, I propose an Optimality Theoretic analysis where semantic/pragmatic constraints involving accessibility, information structure and contrast interact, but are ranked lower than syntactic constraints on, for example, verb placement. Finally, the impact of prosody on pronominal object shift is discussed.

This paper first briefly outlines the general political, economic, cultural and linguistic situation in the era of the Hanseatic League. Then the dichotomy ‘language contact’ vs ‘dialect contact’ is discussed in detail. The main focus lies, however, on a thorough investigation of various forms of bilingualism and especially on the concept of semi-communication. It is shown that this concept (roughly, the way Scandinavians today communicate with each other by means of their vernaculars) has played an important role in most linguistic contacts in the area of the Hansa. Several pragmatic and semiotic conditions as well as communicational maxims are presented, together with some interlinguistic rules of thumb. The paper concludes with a summary of the main characteristics of the various language contacts to be observed during the age of the Hansa and of the typological consequences for the modern Scandinavian languages.