This special issue of Nordic Journal of Linguistics is dedicated to diachronic generative syntax in the North Germanic languages. With the introduction of generative grammar in the late 1950s the historical perspective became less prominent within linguistics. Instead, contemporary language, normally represented by the researcher’s own intuitions, became the unmarked empirical basis within the generative field, although there were some early pioneering studies in generative historical syntax (e.g. Traugott 1972). It was not until the introduction of the Principles and Parameters theory in the 1990s that diachronic syntax emerged as an important domain of inquiry for generative linguists. Since then, the study of syntactic change has added a temporal dimension to the overall enterprise to better understand the nature of variation in human language.

In this paper, I argue that the folk ballad tradition of the Faroe Islands, to date never examined in detail by metrists, offers substantial empirical support for the necessity of maintaining the classic metrical template, as well as the distinction between metrical and prosodic structure: meter is an abstraction which can neither be collapsed into phonology, nor fundamentally detached from it (Kiparsky 2006, Blumenfeld 2015, pace Hayes & MacEachern 1998, Fabb & Halle 2008). The ballad performances also reveal a unidirectional correspondence from strong metrical positions to strong dance steps and strong musical beats, indicating that metrical prominence plays a significant role in determining rhythm. The Faroese tradition thus provides a window into the relation between metrical structure and performance. In support of my conclusions I draw upon both the ballad texts and audio-visual recordings of sections of sample ballads I made on the Faroe Islands.

The paper proposes a refined analysis of the semantics and pragmatics of the Norwegian non-truth-conditional adverb jo ‘after all, of course’. According to the literature, jo indicates that the proposition is ‘given’ in some sense or other. Based on new empirical investigations, we argue that the Relevance-theoretic notion mutual manifestness (Sperber & Wilson 1986/1995, Blass 2000) accurately captures the givenness aspect of jo, and we demonstrate through authentic examples what it means for a proposition to be mutually manifest. In addition to mutual manifestness, jo signals that the proposition is a premise for deriving a conclusion. The conclusion often – but not always – opposes someone’s view. We argue that the frequent opposition interpretations are a consequence of the nature of the procedures encoded by jo. In addition to clarifying the semantic and pragmatic properties of jo, the paper sheds light on the Relevance-theoretic notion procedural semantics as well as illustrating its usefulness in the study of pragmatic particles.

In this article, we examine the form and meaning of a subtype of causative adjuncts, purpose adjuncts, in Estonian and Finnish. The analysis is based on the micro-modular approach of Conceptual Semantics (Nikanne 1990, 2005, 2018; Pörn 2004; Paulsen 2011a, 2011b; Petrova 2011). It provides a non-linear approach to linguistic causation, alternative to the linear models. By the term ‘non-linear’ we mean the involvement of separate levels of conceptual structure that influence the causative reading, and a separation of causation from the temporal flow of the situation. We propose two causative operators for subordinate causative structures, BECAUSE OF and LEAD TO. According to their temporal structures, we separate two types of purpose adjuncts: reason-purpose adjuncts and avoidance adjuncts. The causative effect of purpose is in our analysis related to the notion of intentionality.

This paper presents a diachronic account for the emergence of the expletive það in Icelandic impersonal constructions. Using data from the IcePaHC corpus (Wallenberg et al. 2011), I show that a cataphorically referential það functions as a topic position placeholder in Old Icelandic (1150-1350) in impersonals with a clausal argument. The corpus findings indicate that það spread from this early cataphoric context to impersonals which lack the clausal argument, with ‘say-type predicates’ acting as a bridging context. Strikingly, this coincides with another change whereby cataphoric það becomes increasingly restricted to the topic position in constructions with a clausal subject. I interpret this as evidence that cataphoric það is losing its subject status in such contexts and becoming a topic position placeholder, in line with its function in impersonals. This sheds light on the mixed status of cataphoric það in modern Icelandic and challenges the ‘Prefinite First Hypothesis’ for the diachrony of Germanic expletives (e.g. Faarlund 1990).

This article traces the diachronic development from the Proto Norse demonstrative hinn via the Old Icelandic definite article(s) to the Modern Icelandic article system. This demonstrative gave rise to two distinct article elements during the Viking period that are well-attested from Old Icelandic onwards, a freestanding and a suffixed article.

Based on evidence from Old Icelandic, I argue for a categorial distinction between an adjectival and a nominal article, which does not entirely coincide with a mere morpho-phonological distinction. The former, which mostly occurs as a freestanding element, is a genuine component of AP, not an immediate constituent of the nominal extended projection. The latter, which only occurs in suffixal form, heads a low projection in the extended nominal projection and has scope only over the noun. For Modern Icelandic, on the other hand, I will adopt the idea that free and suffixed articles are two surface manifestations of the same element.

The diachronic perspective is complemented by an examination of the development of seven adjectivally modified definite noun phrase patterns. This empirical survey reveals several surprising facts: The standard pattern of modification in Modern Icelandic was virtually non-existent prior to the 17th century, and double definiteness persisted until the early 20th century. Likewise, certain modificational patterns otherwise found in Mainland Scandinavian were dominant between the 16th and 19th century. This latter observation points to a competition between two adjectival articles hinn vs. sá similar to the one that had taken place earlier in Mainland Scandinavian. In Icelandic, however, sá did not replace hinn, and, in the long run, a pattern not comprising an adjectival article became the dominant one.

This study analyzes language choice, bi- and multilingualism, and gender in a corpus of over 22 million Twitter messages by almost 36,000 authors from the Nordic countries and territories. Author location, gender, and tweet language are identified using a novel method. Three principal findings are discussed: First, gendered preference for particular languages in the Nordics can be explained in part by patterns of gendered migration. Second, a distinct geographical pattern of female/male preference for the national languages of the region and for English is evident for users who are likely native users of a Nordic language: Females are more likely to use English, while males are more likely to use a Nordic language. Third, while high rates of bi- and multilingualism are found across the whole sample, males are more likely to use more than one language in all the Nordic countries/territories. The latter two findings are interpreted in light of sociolinguistic considerations as evidence for incipient language shift towards English for Nordic users on the Twitter platform.

Through in-depth analysis of the use of det ‘it, that’ and så ‘then’ occupying the first clausal position (the prefield) in Danish talk-in-interaction, this paper investigates how speakers use highly flexible linguistic elements to their advantage when commencing clauses in real time. These particular words are useful when occupying the prefield, because their flexible nature means that they can be used even when speakers do not have a full format ready for the carrier clause, as long as they have some idea of the interactional purpose of the clause and its information structural prerequisites. The dominating frequency of the most frequent clause openers goes largely unmentioned in previous accounts of the prefield, and the use of det ‘it, that’ and så ‘then’ challenges the popular notion that the textually unmarked prefield is also the grammatical subject of the carrier clause.

In this article, we discuss the ei litta construction in Norwegian, a construction that involves the use of feminine morphology combined with non-feminine nouns, and expresses evaluation. Through corpus analyses and an online survey, we investigate the form and function of the construction, synchronically and diachronically. We discuss the emergence of the ei litta construction in the light of a larger restructuring of the Norwegian gender system, possibly allowing for greater flexibility in the assignment of gender. We also describe the ei litta construction as an example of gender shift, a previously unattested morphological strategy in Norwegian to express evaluative meaning.

This paper addresses the controversy between Koeneman & Zeijlstra (K&Z) (2014) and Heycock & Sundquist (2017) concerning the viability of K&Z’s strong version of the Rich Agreement Hypothesis in the light of apparent counterexamples from the diachrony of Danish. It makes the general point that establishing whether or not cases of putative V-to-I movement in subordinate clauses can be reanalyzed as V-to-C, i.e. as embedded Verb Second (EV2), depends on the EV2-type of a language. The empirical discussion concerns appositive relatives and conditional protases, with V-to-C in the former being in principle compatible with ‘narrow’ nEV2 as displayed by Modern Mainland Scandinavian languages, and V-to-C in the latter with Old Norse-style ‘broad’ bEV2. It is concluded that the critical stages of Danish need to be scrutinized more closely before the above dispute can be settled.

Mainland Scandinavian displays a main clause phenomenon (MCP), where some embedded clauses allow the word order V(erb)–Neg(ation), in addition to the canonical Neg–V. Much has been written on the licensing conditions for embedded V–Neg, but formulating the exact conditions has proven difficult. This may be due to the fact that research has typically focussed on selected sets of clauses allowing this phenomenon and much of it has been based on the authors’ grammaticality judgements. Drawing conclusions about the licensing conditions for embedded V–Neg requires examining all types of environments that allow it in natural speech as well as the types of environments that disallow it. Therefore, the primary goal of this paper is to map out the full distribution of embedded V–Neg. This paper examines embedded V–Neg collected from five corpora of spontaneous Norwegian speech. The data provide information on the relative frequency of V–Neg in various constructions and identify hitherto unattested contexts for this word order. The paper shows that V–Neg is productive in adjunct clauses, a fact difficult to accommodate under accounts claiming it is licensed under selection of specific predicates. The data support a more discourse-oriented approach to embedded V–Neg.

The origins of prepositional phrase structure in Finnic languages shows little evidence of being contact-induced. However, whether language contact has influenced the structure at a later stage is debatable. The current paper provides new findings on the topic of contact-induced change by comparing the distribution of prepositions in Estonian dialects with the respective contact languages. The purpose is to determine whether the usage frequency of prepositions is higher in areas mainly in contact with prepositional Indo-European languages. The topic is approached from a corpus-based, frequency-driven viewpoint. The results show a small, gradual decrease in the use of prepositions from the northeastern to the western dialect areas. Thus, the uneven but regular distribution of prepositions in Estonian dialects cannot be explained with language contact. This evidence supports the general understanding that adpositions are an unlikely class to be influenced by contact.

Pseudocoordination with posture verbs in Mainland Scandinavian (e.g. the Norwegian Han sitter og arbeider ‘he sits and works’) is traditionally considered a grammaticalized progressive construction. The posture verb is said to have a bleached meaning, and to have the grammatical status of an auxiliary or a light verb. In recent years, some researchers have expressed doubt about this view. In this article, I argue that the traditional arguments for grammaticalization do not hold. However, I also give new evidence for early grammaticalization. Posture verbs can to some extent be used as light verbs in sentences such as Kebab må sittes og nytes ‘kebab must sit.pass and enjoy.pass’, which have never been discussed in connection with grammaticalization. Finally, I argue that pseudocoordination with posture verbs should not be seen as progressive, but rather as a locational (or situative) construction.

This squib discusses the clitic DU (-du/-ðu/-tu) in Icelandic and compares it with other reduced forms of personal pronouns, such as ’ann (for hann ‘he’) and ’ún (for hún ‘she’). We show that there are various restrictions found on DU which are not found on other reduced forms of personal pronouns in Icelandic. We argue that whereas reduced forms such as ’ann and ’ún are morphophonologically conditioned, DU is syntactically conditioned; it is not only clause-bounded but also phase-bounded.