New Research in Linguistics and English Language
The development of Scandinavian bound definiteness marking and the clitic-affix distinction
Date published:
April 2008
Authors:
Kersti Börjars & Pauline Harries
Abstract:
All Scandinavian languages have a morphologically bound element which can fill the same function as the definite article in other Germanic languages, cf. Swedish grodan 'frog.DEF' vs Dutch de kicker 'DEF frog'. This phenomenon has been well-studied, descriptively and theoretically as well as diachronically and synchronically. Still, there appears to be scope for disagreement both on empirical and theoretical grounds, as a recent exchange between Faarlund (2007) and Abraham & Leiss (2007) shows. In this paper, we argue that both the proposed analyses fail to capture the facts. We provide evidence to show that the differences between Old Norse and Modern Norwegian are not as striking as Faarlund assumes, Furthermore, the close connection made between formal properties and functional properties leads to misinterpretations of the data. We then provide an analysis which does not assume such a close relation.