This article attempts to give a uniform and coherent analysis of the semantics and syntax of negation, with special emphasis on negative concord (NC) constructions. It is argued that negation is semantically a tripartite quantifier binding the event variable in its restriction. In syntax, this logical form corresponds to a structure where a NegP is present with Neg ° (normally) hosting the negative particle and a specifier as a checking position in the Minimalist sense. As a consequence, negative indefinites are held to be weak indefinites with a formal feature NEG which has to be checked away (thus obtaining Neg absorption). Additionally, some new data are introduced showing that even English style negative indefinites are analysable as non-negated weak indefinites.

American Sign Language uses spatial locations as an integral part of its systems of pronominal reference. Referents mentioned in an ASL discourse may be associated with points in the signing space (“referential loci”). Pronominal signs are directed to those loci, unambiguously indicating their referents. Referential loci are sometimes analyzed as overt phonological representations of the semantic indices associated with referents in the discourse. In this paper I show that referential loci do not function merely to index or identify referents, but rather that they carry a great deal of additional information pertaining to the conceptual location of referents in the discourse space. I examine contexts in which one referent is associated with two distinct loci in the signing space, and offer a preliminary formulation of principles governing locus selection in such contexts.

In a recent study of the clause-initial position in verb-second declaratives (the prefield), Bohnacker & Rosén (2008) found significant differences between native Swedish and German concerning the frequencies with which constituents occurred in the prefield, as well as qualitative differences concerning the mapping of information structure and linear word order: Swedish exhibited a stronger tendency than German to place new information, the so-called rheme, later in the clause. Swedish-speaking learners of German transferred these patterns from their L1 to German. Their sentences were syntactically well-formed but had Swedish-style prefield frequencies and a strong pattern of Rheme Later, which native Germans perceive as unidiomatic, as an acceptability judgment and a rewrite-L2texts task showed. The present study extends Bohnacker & Rosén's work in three ways. Learners of the reverse language combination (L1 German, L2 Swedish) are investigated to see whether similar phenomena also manifest themselves there. Secondly, written and oral data from highly advanced learners are examined to see whether the learners’ persistent problems can be overcome by extensive immersion (3, 6 and 9 years of L2 exposure). Thirdly, besides investigating theme–rheme (old vs. new information), some consideration is given to another information-structural level, background vs. focus. The learners are found to overuse the prefield at first, with non-Swedish, German-style frequency patterns (e.g. low proportions of clause-initial expletives and high proportions of clause-initial rhematic elements). This is interpreted as evidence for L1 transfer of information-structural or discourse-pragmatic preferences. After 6 and 9 years, a substantial increase in clause-initial expletive subjects, clefts and lightweight given elements is indicative of development towards the target. The findings are related to current generative theorizing on the syntax-pragmatics interface, where it is often maintained that the integration of multiple types of information is one of the hardest areas for L2 learners to master.

In this article I argue that Taraldsen's (1983) analysis of verb particle constructions cannot be maintained because it predicts a considerable subset of the grammatical particle constructions to be ungrammatical, as well as some ungrammatical particle constructions to be grammatical. In my analysis of verb particle constructions as causative constructions, I borrow the device of reanalysis from Taraldsen. This reanalysis is crucially taken as a licensing condition for the rule of particle movement, but it does not constitute a sufficient condition for the possibility of particle movement, since I will also argue that this rule is subject to essentially non-syntactic restrictions so that its output cannot be wholly deduced from GB syntax subtheories.

The Extended Projection Principle (EPP) has remained a controversial topic in generative grammar. This article proposes to derive the EPP from a generalized theory of nominal case and verbal agreement. According to the proposal presented in this article, morphosyntactic features such as case and verbal phi-features are valued uniformly by the closest asymmetrically c-commanding element, whereas the PF interface is constrained so as to prevent verbs from being valued nominal case and nominals by verbal phi-features. This constraint together with a new theory of valuation explains the appearance of the EPP. The theory is applied to the investigation of negative clauses in Finnish and other languages, Finnish (elliptical) non-finite negative clauses, expletive constructions, multiple wh-movement in a variety of languages, multiple agreement both in the finite and nominal domains, and asymmetries between finite and non-finite clauses.

This paper develops within HPSG a model of grammar with two syntactic levels, valence lists and argument structure, at which sentences may have different representations: syntactically ergative and Western Austronesian languages are distinctive by allowing different prominence orderings between the valence lists and argument structure, while forms like passives and causatives have nested argument structure lists. While binding theory and related phenomena have traditionally been described in terms of surface grammatical relations or configurations, we demonstrate that binding theory is actually correctly described in terms of argument structure configurations. Such an approach generalizes nicely over accusative and ergative constructions, correctly predicts binding patterns with causative and passive verbs, and supports the lexicality-preserving account of passives and causatives advocated within HPSG.

The semantics of the linguistic modals is argued to be determined mainly by the power structure of the participants in the interaction. In the deontic uses of the modals, another determining factor is the expectations of the participants' attitudes towards the relevant action. By viewing the evidence as a power in its own right, our analysis can be generalized to the epistemic uses in a coherent way. The epistemic uses are seen as pragmatic strengthenings of the deontic uses, rather than as metaphorical mappings.

This paper explores issues of intersubjectivity and shared understanding as they arise in dyadic spoken interaction. Using data from Swedish conversations, we approach the topic by focusing on the functions of a reactive construction that occurs in situations when a linguistic expression (x) has been used in a prior utterance, and this expression is found to be only partially acceptable in the situation at hand. It is therefore reacted to by one of the interlocutors, and negotiated in a new turn initiated by x-å-x, i.e. a unit in which two identical copies of x are conjoined by å ‘and’, and then expanded by a supporting argument. The pragmatic functions of the construction include that of suggesting a sufficient clarification of what should be a reasonable situated meaning and an intersubjective basis for ensuing talk.

This article investigates the morphosyntactic status of dative case in Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese. We hypothesize that these three languages represent three diachronic stages signalled synchronically by the degree of preservation or non-preservation of dative under movement. Thus, we explore the synchronic status of dative under passive movement and topicalization in the three languages, while simultaneously paying attention to the larger questions of diachronic preservation and non-preservation of dative. We suggest that our findings have interesting ramifications for the categorization of case as structural and non-structural in generative grammar.

This paper explores different syntactic variations and functional properties of clausal units that are initiated by the finite verb in Swedish. We focus on V1 constructions that are basically declarative in function, thus excluding interrogative, conditional and directive uses. Because V1 constructions, and particularly certain variants of them, are typical of spoken Swedish, our examples and analyses focus primarily on the usage in speaking. The V1 constructions studied include whole-utterance constructions in conversational sequences, utterance-internal extensions, and utterance-internal reshapings, such as syntactic blends. We will offer an analysis of (declarative) V1 constructions, which in some respects differs from analyses proposed by generative syntacticians or traditional grammarians. Our analysis of the constructional resource is discourse oriented. In this perspective, V1 constructions are analyzable as sequentially dependent, second, or ‘subsequent’ moves, viz. units that can scarcely initiate a communicative project but which instead continue, extend or comment on an already initiated project. Thus, rather than analyzing V1 constructions as one type of ellipsis they could be seen as full-fledged clausal units whose existence is conditioned by their position in a discourse or utterance context. From a theoretical perspective, this paper is a contribution to an emerging dialogical or interactional model of (Swedish) grammar.

This article attempts to shed light on the issue of a possible link between the loss of ‘rich’ subject-verb agreement and the loss of verb raising in embedded clauses in earlier stages of the Mainland Scandinavian languages. Different versions of this so-called ‘Rich Agreement Hypothesis’ are compared in light of new diachronic data from the history of Danish. Examples of word order variation with and without verb raising over sentential adverbials were collected from a corpus of twelve sets of texts written in the Early Modern Danish period (ca. 1500–1700). Empirical results indicate that distinctions in person agreement in the verbal inflectional paradigm disappeared nearly 250 years before a significant decline in the frequency of verb raising. In order to explain a possible trigger for this change, the article closely examines the impact of structurally ambiguous word order and syntactic – not morphological – clues during acquisition.

This paper argues that the conversational style of adolescents in multiethnic areas in Oslo is characterized by an extended degree of epistemic focus and expressions pointing explicitly towards the news value of utterances. The linguistic traits contributing to this notion is a set of discourse markers where wallah, or as it is often referred to in Norwegian; wolla (orig. Arab. ‘I swear by Allah’), seems to be prominent, together with Norwegian counterparts such as sverg, jeg sverger and helt ærlig (‘swear’, ‘I swear’ and ‘quite honestly’). Equipped with methodological insights from Interactional linguistics, the distribution and discourse functions of the markers are analysed in a corpus of conversations between adolescents growing up in multiethnic areas (the Upus/Oslo-corpus) and compared to another larger, representative corpus of modern Oslo dialect (the NoTa/Oslo-corpus). The discourse markers in question are also discussed in light of grammaticalization processes.

A right-dislocated phrase in Norwegian is either a full lexical phrase of the canonical sort, which is richer in semantic content than its coreferential intraclausal partner, or it is a pronoun which adds no semantic content that was not already present in the coreferential intraclausal phrase. A frequently occurring subcategory of right dislocation in Norwegian involves a lexical phrase in situ and a coreferential dislocated pronoun. While an afterthought analysis of pronominal right-dislocated items may easily be dismissed offhand, an afterthought account of the canonical type of Norwegian right dislocation may seem initially plausible. However, on the basis of prosodic, syntactic and pragmatic criteria it is argued that there is no viable afterthought analysis of any subtype of right dislocation in Norwegian.

The paper discusses the historical origin, present day distribution and prosodic status of preaspiration in Icelandic. Having developed as a movement of the openness of the glottis, originally a feature of “hard” stops, towards the nucleus of the stressed syllable, its distribution must be accounted for by a “segmental” rule operating on historical (underlying) hard stops. Its status with respect to length and stress is, however, shown to be that of a prosody of the nucleus of the Modern Icelandic syllable, since it carries length when the syllable is stressed. The development of preaspiration is seen as a part of a more general rule also responsible for voiceless sonorants and fricatives in the nucleus.

Standard negation is the basic sentential negation in a language. This article proposes a typology of standard negation that takes into account the whole negative construction and allows explanation of different negation types by different semantico-pragmatic background phenomena. There is semantic and pragmatic asymmetry between affirmation and negation, and this asymmetry is manifested in different ways in the morphosyntax of negative constructions. The primary division in the classification is between symmetric and asymmetric negation. The asymmetric type can be divided into subtypes according to which aspects of the semantico-pragmatic asymmetry are grammaticalized in the negative constructions. Symmetric and asymmetric negative constructions are analogous to the affirmative structure and to the background semantics and pragmatics of negation, respectively.

This short communication is a brief extension of recent work on verb second (V2) in Scandinavian declarative clauses and a contribution to research on the relation between V2 and illocutionary force. It is argued that Swedish data present a problem for the hypothesis that a bi-conditional relation holds between the illocutionary force of an assertion and V2 word order. The relevant force, to the extent that we can identify it, appears to be available also in the absence of V2 word order. It is tentatively suggested that V2 encodes evidentiality.

Hull (1988) uses recent developments in the theory of biological evolution, in particular rigorous application of the population theory of species, a consistently phylogenetic approach to evolutionary taxonomy and a proposed resolution of the dispute over which levels natural selection operates, to propose a general analysis of selection processes which he then applies to conceptual change in science. Hull's model of selection is applied to language change. It is argued that the utterance plays the central role in linguistic selection, and causal mechanisms by which linguistic selection – language change – occurs are proposed. The final sections consider the possibility that selection occurs also at higher levels of linguistic organization, and suggest how language contact may be accounted for in terms of phylogenetic reticulation.

A new formal analysis of the tonal accent contrast in Urban East Norwegian (UEN) is developed in this paper, based on Optimality Theory. Contrary to the widespread assumption that the contrast is based on privativity, this paper represents a return to the position that the contrast derives from different timing of a common underlying melody. Surface privativity, i.e. the absence vs. the presence of an H that can be observed in the contrast between accent 1 and 2 in UEN is analysed as the result of marked (accent 1) vs. unmarked (accent 2) association of a common tonal input. The marked status of accent 1 follows from lexical pre-linking, protected by high-ranking faithfulness, which overrides (unmarked) association driven by the markedness constraints alone.

Recent work on Object Shift (OS) suggests that this is not as uniform an operation as traditionally assumed. In this paper, we examine OS in the spontaneous speech of adults in large Danish, Norwegian and Swedish child language corpora in order to explore variation with respect to OS across these three languages. We evaluate our results against three recent strands of accounts of OS, namely a prosodic/phonological account, an account in terms of cognitive status, and an account in terms of information structure. Our investigation shows that there is both within-language and across-language variation in the application of OS, and that the three accounts can explain some of our data. However, all accounts are faced with challenges, especially when explaining exceptional cases.

This article discusses a phenomenon which has been referred to as ‘double determination’, ‘double definiteness’, or in the Scandinavian tradition ‘over-definiteness’. In this article, I define double determination and double definiteness, so that a distinction is made between the two terms. I use ‘double determination’ when both elements can function independently as semantic determiners. ‘Double definiteness’, on the other hand, is a form of agreement. A number of Swedish constructions are then examined which are plausible candidates for double determination. It is shown that only some of these are genuine cases of double determination, the others are more accurately described as double definiteness. In the cases of double determination, the determination is represented once as a syntactic element and once as a morphological element. The second part of this article focuses on this ‘morphological determiner’, referred to as def. The Swedish morphological determiner is compared with those of the other Scandinavian languages and the languages of the Balkans. It is shown that in languages which have an element like the Swedish def there is considerable variation in how this element functions within the language and in its status with respect to double determination and double definiteness.