Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:17:48.909Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Distribution and function of embedded V–Neg in Norwegian: A corpus study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2019

Tina Louise Ringstad
Tina Louise Ringstad*
Affiliation:
Department of Language and Literature, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway
*
Email for correspondence: tina.ringstad@ntnu.no
Get access

Abstract

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.

Keywords

corpus studyembedded V–Negembedded V2main clause phenomenaNorwegianword order
Type
Research Article
Information
Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , December 2019 , pp. 329 - 363
Copyright
© Nordic Association of Linguistics 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Åfarli, Tor & Sakshaug, Laila. 2006. Grammatikk: Syntaks og morfologi med norsk i sentrum [Grammar: Syntax and morphology with Norwegian in focus]. Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget.Google Scholar
Bentzen, Kristine. 2011. The status of the embedded V–Neg word order. Handout, University of Tromsø.Google Scholar
Bentzen, Kristine. 2014. Embedded Verb Second (V2). Nordic Atlas of Language Structures (NALS) Journal 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bentzen, Kristine, Hrafnbjargarson, Gunnar H., Hróarsdóttir, Thorbjörg & Wiklund, Anna-Lena. 2007. The Tromsø guide to the Force behind V2. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 79, 93–118.Google Scholar
Borthen, Kaja. 2011. Hvor mange ‘det’ fins det i norsk? En studie med utgangspunkt i Norsk Ordbok [How many ‘it’ are there in Norwegian? A study based on the Norwegian Dictionary]. Det Kongelige Norske Videnskabers Selskabs Skrifter 1, 93–136.Google Scholar
Caplan, Spencer & Djärv, Kajsa. 2017. Embedded-Verb Second is anti-licenced by discourse familiarity. Presented at Meaning in Flux 2017, Yale University. [Handout]Google Scholar
Christensen, Tanya K., Jensen, Torben J. & Christensen, Marie H.. 2015. Adverbielle ledsætningers ledstilling i dansk talesprog [Adverbial sub-clauses’ word order in Danish speech]. MUDS 15, 97–115.Google Scholar
Djärv, Kajsa, Heycock, Caroline & Rohde, Hannah. 2017. Assertion and factivity: Towards explaining restrictions on embedded V2 in Scandinavian. In Bailey, Laura R. & Sheehan, Michelle (eds.), Order and structure in syntax I: Word order and syntactic structure, 3–28. Berlin: Language Science Press.Google Scholar
Eide, Kristin Melum. 2002. Adjunction sites for Negation in Norwegian: Modals and negation. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 25(2), 225–252.Google Scholar
Faarlund, Jan T., Lie, Svein & Vannebo, Kjell I.. 1997. Norsk referansegrammatikk [Norwegian reference grammar]. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.Google Scholar
Franco, Irene. 2010. Issues in the syntax of Scandinavian embedded clauses. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 86, 137–177.Google Scholar
Gentens, Caroline. 2015. The discursive status of extraposed object clauses. Leuven Working Papers in Linguistics, 105–128.Google Scholar
Hacquard, Valentine & Lidz, Jeffrey. 2018. Children’s attitude problems: Bootstrapping verb meaning from syntax and pragmatics. Mind and Language 34(1), 1–24.Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 2006a. Argument fronting in English, Romance CLLD and the left periphery. In Zanuttini, Héctor C., Herburger, Elena & Portner, Paul (eds.), Negation, Tense and Clausal Architecture: Cross-Linguistic Investigations, 27–52. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 2006b. Conditionals, factives and the left periphery. Lingua 116(10), 1651–1669.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 2010. The internal syntax of adverbial clauses. Lingua 120(3), 628–648.Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 2012a. The syntax of MCP: Deriving the truncation account. In Nye, Rachel, Aelbrecht, Lobke & Haegeman, Liliane (eds.), Main Clause Phenomena (New Horizons 190), 113–134. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 2012b. Adverbial Clauses, Main Clause Phenomena, and Composition of the Left Periphery. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Håkansson, Gisela & Collberg, Sheila Dooley. 1994. The preference for Modal + Neg: An L2 perspective applied to Swedish L1 children. Second Language Research 10(2), 95–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hengeveld, Kees. 1998. Adverbial clauses in the languages of Europe. In van der Auwera, Johan (ed.), Adverbial Constructions in the Languages of Europe, 335–419. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Heycock, Caroline. 2006. Embedded root phenomena. In Everaert, Martin & van Riemsdijk, Henk (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, vol. II, 174–209. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heycock, Caroline, Sorace, Antonella, Hansen, Zakaris S. & Wilson, Frances. 2013. Acquisition in variation (and vice versa): V-to-T in Faroese children. Language Acquisition 20(1), 5–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hooper, Joan & Thompson, Sandra. 1973. On the applicability of root transformations. Linguistic Inquiry 4(4), 465–497.Google Scholar
Hrafnbjargarson, Gunnar H. & Wiklund, Anna-Lena. 2009. General embedded V2: Icelandic A, B, C, etc. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 84, 21–51.Google Scholar
Jensen, Torben J. & Christensen, Tanya K.. 2013. Promoting the demoted: The distribution and semantics of ‘main clause word order’ in spoken Danish complement clauses’. Lingua 137, 38–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johannessen, Janne B., Priestly, Joel, Hagen, Kristin, åfarli, Tor A. & Vangsnes, Øystein A.. 2009. The Nordic Dialect Corpus: An advanced research tool. In Jokinen, Kristiina & Bick, Eckhard (eds.), Proceedings of the 17th Nordic Conference of Computational Linguistics NODALIDA 2009 (NEALT Proceedings Series Volume 4). http://tekstlab.uio.no/nota/scandiasyn/ (accessed between 1 September and 15 December 2015).Google Scholar
Julien, Marit. 2010. Embedded clauses with main clause word order in Mainland Scandinavian. http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/000475 (accessed 1 September 2015).Google Scholar
Julien, Marit. 2015. The force of V2 revisited. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 18, 139–181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karttunen, Lauri. 1971. Some observations on factivity. Research on Language and Social Interaction 4(1), 55–69.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul & Kiparsky, Carol. 1971. Fact. In Steinberg, Danny & Jakobovits, Leon (eds.), Semantics: An Interdisciplinary Reader in Philosophy, Linguistics and Psychology, 345–369. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Levin, Beth. 1993. English Verb Classes and Alternations. Chicago, IL & London: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mæhlum, Brit & Røyneland, Unn. 2012. Det norske dialektlandskapet [The Norwegian dialect landscape]. Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademisk.Google Scholar
Mikkelsen, Line. 2005. Copular Clauses: Specification, Predication and Equation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nordström, Jackie. 2010. Modality and Subordinators. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ørsnes, Bjarne. 2012. Negating the verum: The syntax and semantics of preposed negation in Danish. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 15, 49–105.Google Scholar
Ringstad [Larsen], Tina L. 2014. Byggeklossar i barnespråk [Building bricks in child language]. Master’s thesis, Norwegian University of Science and Technology.Google Scholar
Simons, Mandy. 2007. Observations on embedding verbs, evidentiality, and presupposition. Lingua 117(6), 1034–1056.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simonsen, Hanne Gram. 1990. Children’s Phonology: System and Variation in Three Norwegian Children and one Samoan Child. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, University of Oslo.Google Scholar
Stalnaker, Robert. 1974. Pragmatic presuppositions. In Munitz, Milton Karl & Unger, Peter (eds.), Semantics and Philosophy, 197–214. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Stalnaker, Robert. 1978. Assertion. In Cole, Peter (ed.), Pragmatics (Syntax and Semantics 9), 315–332. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Stalnaker, Robert. 2002. Common ground. Linguistics and Philosophy 25, 701–721.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tekstlab. 2004. Norsk talespråkskorpus – Oslodelen [Norwegian speech corpus: The Oslo part]. Tekstlaboratoriet, ILN, University of Oslo.Google Scholar
Tekstlab. 2009. BigBrother-korpuset [The BigBrother corpus]. Tekstlaboratoriet, ILN, University of Oslo.Google Scholar
Trask, Robert L. 1993. A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Travis, Lisa. 1984. Parameters and Effects of Word Order Variation. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Vikner, Sten. 1995. Verb Movement and Expletive Subjects in the Germanic Languages. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Waldmann, Christian. 2014. The acquisition of Neg–V and V–Neg order in embedded clauses in Swedish: A microparametric approach. Language Acquisition 21(1), 45–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westergaard, Marit R. & Bentzen, Kristine. 2007. The (non-)effect of input frequency on the acquisition of word order in Norwegian embedded clauses. In Gülzow, Insa & Gagarina, Natalia (eds.), Frequency Effects in Language Acquisition: Defining the Limits of Frequency as an Explanatory Concept, 271–306. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiklund, Anna-Lena, Bentzen, Kristine, Hrafnbjargarson, Gunnar H. & Hróarsdóttir, Thorbjörg. 2009. On the distribution and illocution of V2 in Scandinavian that-clauses. Lingua 119(12), 1914–1938.CrossRefGoogle Scholar