Grammaticalization and the historical development of the genitive in Mainland Scandinavian

Askedal, John Ole

doi:10.1075/cilt.237.04ask

Cited by 2 publications

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“…when a genitive phrase and an equivalent von 'of'-phrase are conjoined: wurde sie zur Erbin Aquitaniens und von sieben weiteren Ländern 'she became heiress to Aquitaine and seven more countries' (cf. Askedal 2008 andVater 2015). 6 With uninflected numerals such as fünf 'five' (as opposed to inflected drei 'three'), the dative is preferred (and is part of the standard language) because the genitive plural -contrary to the dative -has no case marker on the head noun and thus would not be formally discernible as a genitive here (cf.…”

Section: State Of Research and Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A contrastive approach to grammatical doubts in some contemporary Germanic languages (German, Dutch, Swedish)

Thomas¹

2023

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Unquestionably (or: undoubtedly), every competent speaker has already come to doubt with respect to the question of which form is correct or appropriate and should be used (in the standard language) when faced with two or more almost identical competing variants of words, word forms or sentence and phrase structure (e.g. German "Pizzas/Pizzen/Pizze" 'pizzas', Dutch "de drie mooiste/mooiste drie stranden" 'the three most beautiful/most beautiful three beaches', Swedish "större än jag/mig" 'taller than I/me'). Such linguistic uncertainties or "cases of doubt" (cf. i.a. Klein 2003, 2009, 2018; Müller & Szczepaniak 2017; Schmitt, Szczepaniak & Vieregge 2019; Stark 2019 as well as the useful collections of data of Duden vol. 9, Taaladvies.net, Språkriktighetsboken etc.) systematically occur also in native speakers and they do not necessarily coincide with the difficulties of second language learners. In present-day German, most grammatical uncertainties occur in the domains of inflection (nominal plural formation, genitive singular allomorphy of strong masc./neut. nouns, inflectional variation of weak masc. nouns, strong/weak adjectival inflection and comparison forms, strong/weak verb forms, perfect auxiliary selection) and word-formation (linking elements in compounds, separability of complex verbs). As for syntax, there are often doubts in connection with case choice (pseudo-partitive constructions, prepositional case government) and agreement (especially due to coordination or appositional structures). This contribution aims to present a contrastive approach to morphological and syntactic uncertainties in contemporary Germanic languages (mostly German, Dutch, and Swedish) in order to obtain a broader and more fine-grained typology of grammatical instabilities and their causes. As will be discussed, most doubts of competent speakers - a problem also for general linguistic theory - can be attributed to processes of language change in progress, to language or variety contact, to gaps and rule conflicts in the grammar of every language or to psycholinguistic conditions of language processing. Our main concerns will be the issues of which (kinds of) common or different critical areas there are within Germanic (and, on the other hand, in which areas there are no doubts), which of the established (cross-linguistically valid) explanatory approaches apply to which phenomena and, ultimately, the question whether the new data reveals further lines of explanation for the empirically observable (standard) variation.

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Section: State Of Research and Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A contrastive approach to grammatical doubts in some contemporary Germanic languages (German, Dutch, Swedish)

Thomas¹

2023

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“…Lass (1997:297), for example, regards it as the very exception that proves the rule. 15 Also in more recent works (Askedal 2003;Börjars 2003) the s-genitive is not considered to be an example of degrammaticalization. Lehmann (1995Lehmann ( [1982), for example, writes about the English s-genitive that it 'looks like a bona fide case' but, following Janda (1980), he assumes that OE -(e)s was reanalysed as a possessive pronoun in Middle English (see 3.4.1), and hence that 'it was not the genitive on its own what expanded to higher syntactic levels.…”

Section: The Factsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More serious challenges to the claim that the s-genitive is a case of degrammaticalization are found in Tabor & Traugott (1998) for the English s-genitive, and Askedal (2000Askedal ( , 2003 for the Mainland Scandinavian s-genitive. Both Tabor & Traugott and Askedal assert that the history of the s-genitive is in fact a case of GRAMMATICALIZATION.…”

Section: Grammaticalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rather, the (real or putative) clitic possessive pronoun, which had been compatible with these levels from start, got generalized to non-masculine genders' (Lehmann, 1995(Lehmann, [1982:19). 15 Also in more recent works (Askedal 2003;Börjars 2003) the s-genitive is not considered to be an example of degrammaticalization. But before turning to this discussion, I will briefly outline the history of Swedish -s, which can be subdivided into three stages (for details see Norde 1997:93ff.).…”

Section: The Factsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Demarcating degrammaticalization: the Swedish s-genitive revisited

Norde¹

2006

Nord J Linguist

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Ever since its introduction by Christian Lehmann in 1982, the term 'degrammaticalization' has been the subject of much controversy. There has been considerable disagreement about what kind of phenomena the term refers to, and indeed if degrammaticalization exists at all. In this paper I will argue that degrammaticalization is not grammaticalization in reverse, but a separate kind of change worthy of study in its own right. The purpose of this paper will be to show how degrammaticalization changes are best identified, by using existing linguistic tests as diagnostics for establishing changes in the morphological status of certain degrammaticalization suspects, and for assessing the nature of the subchanges involved. One of the stock examples of degrammaticalization literature, i.e. the s-genitive in Swedish, will serve as a case study.

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Grammaticalization and the historical development of the genitive in Mainland Scandinavian

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

A contrastive approach to grammatical doubts in some contemporary Germanic languages (German, Dutch, Swedish)

A contrastive approach to grammatical doubts in some contemporary Germanic languages (German, Dutch, Swedish)

Demarcating degrammaticalization: the Swedish s-genitive revisited

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