Muriel Norde: The History of the Genitive in Swedish. A Case Study in
                        Degrammaticalization [doctoral dissertation], 1997. Vakgroep Skandinavische
                        taal- en letterkunde, Amsterdam.

In their recent book,English: The Language of the Vikings, Joseph Embley Emonds and Jan Terje Faarlund attempt to make the case that from its Middle period onwards, English is a North Germanic language, descended from the Norse varieties spoken in Medieval England, rather than a West Germanic language, as traditionally assumed. In this review article we critique Emonds & Faarlund's proposal, focusing particularly on the syntactic evidence that forms the basis of their argumentation. A closer look at a number of constructions for which the authors suggest a Norse origin reveals that the situation is not as they present it: in many cases, the syntactic properties of Old and Middle English are not given careful enough consideration, and/or the chronology of the developments is not compatible with a Norse origin. Moreover, the authors do not engage with the large body of sound changes that constitute the strongest evidence for a West Germanic origin. We conclude that Emonds & Faarlund fail to make a convincing case either for a North Germanic origin or against a West Germanic origin.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Delsing (1999) and Börjars (2003) The group genitive cannot be attributed to Norse inheritance, then. To summarize this section: There is evidence from genitive positioning against the view that the English s-genitive is an inheritance from Norse, and in the case of group genitives we are demonstrably dealing with parallel innovation.…”

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confidence: 99%

English is (still) a West Germanic language

Bech¹,

Walkden²

2015

“…The traditional view, to which Delsing (1991Delsing ( , 1999 adheres, holds that the -s genitive ending spread to other stems first and then changed from being an affix to being a clitic. What IS a matter of dispute is the order in which the main changes occurred which lead to the current distribution of -s in Swedish.…”

Section: The Early Development Of the Swedish Possessivementioning

confidence: 99%

“…What IS a matter of dispute is the order in which the main changes occurred which lead to the current distribution of -s in Swedish. 2 For different views and discussion I refer the reader to Norde (1997Norde ( , 2001b and Delsing (1991Delsing ( , 1999Delsing ( , 2001. Norde, on the other hand, concludes that it was the other way around: '-s was first reanalysed as a phrase marker with masculine and neuter stems before it spread to other noun phrases ' (1997:223).…”

Section: The Early Development Of the Swedish Possessivementioning

confidence: 99%

Morphological status and (de)grammaticalisation: the Swedish possessive

Börjars

2003

It has been argued that the development of the Swedish possessive -s constitutes an example of degrammaticalisation because it has changed from being an affix to being a clitic (Norde 1997; 2001a, b). I argue that a simple distinction between affix and clitic cannot capture the development of this element, instead a distinction in two dimensions need to be made; PLACEMENT needs to be distinguished from DEGREE OF ATTACHMENT. Furthermore, I claim that the distinction between agreement and once only marking represents yet another dimension. With respect to the Swedish possessive, as Norde (1997) shows, there has been a clear change from agreement to once only marking; however, I argue that this change does not tell us anything about the element's morphological status. With respect to placement, -s is still subject to competing constraints and with respect to attachment, there is some evidence of morphological interaction between the -s and the word to which it attaches. It is then inappropriate to call the Swedish possessive -s a clitic and to refer to the change which it has undergone as degrammaticalisation.

“…The constructions are dealt with in many of the studies of Norwegian that we have mentioned here, but an early, thorough study is Fiva (1987). The definiteness associated with the possessive has been questioned by Koptjevskaja-Tamm (2003), and the history and current morphosyntactic status of the genitive -s has been discussed by Delsing (1991bDelsing ( , 1999Delsing ( , 2001Delsing ( , 2002, Norde (1997Norde ( , 2001Norde ( , 2006 and Börjars (2003).…”

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confidence: 99%

Introduction: The syntax of nominals and noun phrases

Boejars¹,

Delsing²

2008

Self Cite

The noun phrase was long a neglected area within research in modern syntactic theory. Studies tended to focus instead on the clause and less attention was paid to the internal structure of the noun phrase. The early studies would often take an interest in the properties of noun phrases only in so far as they interacted with clausal morpho-syntax. Nominalisations were then subject to some early studies, as in Chomsky (1970) and work inspired by it.