Cover not available

In:Historical Linguistics 2017: Selected papers from the 23rd International Conference on Historical Linguistics, San Antonio, Texas, 31 July – 4 August 2017
Edited by Bridget Drinka
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 350] 2020
► pp. 363–384

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

Expletives in Icelandic

A corpus study

 | University of Konstanz
Published online: 9 July 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.350.17boo
Abstract
Various claims have been made concerning expletives in historical Icelandic (Eythórsson & Sigurðardóttir, 2016; Hróarsdóttir, 1998; Rögnvaldsson, 2002). However, previous studies are limited to certain centuries and/or text types. This paper assesses the status of expletives throughout all stages of attested Icelandic (1150–2008) using the Icelandic Parsed Historical Corpus (IcePaHC). The IcePaHC data indicates that the expletive is already attested in impersonal constructions in Old Icelandic, contra previous accounts. I also claim that þar ‘there’ was historically available as an expletive in presentational constructions and argue against a recent claim that the emergence of expletive það is a contact phenomenon. Strikingly, postfinite expletives are attested historically, which challenges the standard cross-Germanic account for the diachrony of expletives.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Three types of það
    • 2.2Position of expletive það
    • 2.3Historical context
  • 3.Corpus study
    • 3.1Methodology
    • 3.2Cataphoric það
    • 3.3Expletive það in impersonal constructions
    • 3.4Expletive það in presentational constructions
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1A contact-induced change?
    • 4.2A closer look at distribution
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
References (32)
References
Booth, H. (forthcoming). Expletives and Clause Structure: Syntactic Change in Icelandic. Doctoral dissertation, University of Manchester.
Breivik, L. E. (1983). Existential there: A Synchronic and Diachronic Study. Bergen: Department of English, University of Bergen.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eythórsson, T. & Sigurðardóttir, S. S. (2016). A brief history of Icelandic weather verbs: syntax, semantics and argument structure. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax, 96, 91–125.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Faarlund, J. T. (1990). Syntactic Change: Toward a Theory of Historical Syntax. Berlin; New York: de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Faarlund, Jan Terje. 2004. The Syntax of Old Norse: with a survey of the inflectional morphology and a complete bibliography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Falk, C. (1993). Non-referential Subjects in the History of Swedish. Lund: Department of Scandinavian Languages, University of Lund. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haiman, J. (1974). Targets and Syntactic Change. The Hague: Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hróarsdóttir, Þ. (1998). Setningafræðilegar Breytingar á 19. öld: Þróun Þriggja Málbreytinga. Reykjavík: Institute of Linguistics, University of Iceland.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ingham, R. (2001). The structure and function of expletive there in pre-modern English. Reading Working Papers in Linguistics, 5, 231–249.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kinn, K. (2011). Overt non-referential subjects and subject-verb agreement in Middle Norwegian. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax, 88, 21–50.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2016). Referential vs. non-referential null subjects in Middle Norwegian. Nordic Journal of Linguistics, 39(3), 277–310. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kroch, A. & Taylor, A. (2000). The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English (PPCME2). Philadelphia: Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, second edition. [URL]
Lenerz, J. (1985). Zur Theorie syntaktischen Wandels: das expletive es in der Geschichte des Deutschen. In W. Abraham (Ed.), Erklärende Syntax des Deutschen (pp. 99–136). Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Maling, J. (1988). Variations on a theme: Existential sentences in Swedish and Icelandic. McGill Working Papers in Linguistics. Special Issue on Comparative Germanic Syntax, 168–191.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pfenninger, S. E. (2009). Grammaticalization Paths of English and High German Existential Constructions: A Corpus-based Study. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Platzack, C. (1983). Existential sentences in English, German, Icelandic and Swedish. In F. Karlsson (Ed.), Papers from the 7th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, (pp. 80–100). Helsinki: Department of General Linguistics, University of Helsinki.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Randall, B. (2005). CorpusSearch2 User’s Guide. Philadelphia: Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania. [URL]
Richards, M. & Biberauer, T. (2005). Explaining Expl. In M. den Dikken & C. Tortora (Eds.), The Function of Function Words and Functional Categories, (pp. 115–153). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rögnvaldsson, E. (2002). ÞAÐ í fornu máli – og síðar. Íslenskt mál, 24, 7–30.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Santorini, B. (2010). Annotation manual for the Penn Historical Corpora and the PCEEC. Philadelphia: Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania. [URL]
Sells, P. (2005). The peripherality of the Icelandic expletive. In M. Butt & T. Holloway King (Eds.), Proceedings of the LFG ’05 Conference (pp. 408–428). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sigurðsson, H. Á. (1990). V1 declaratives and verb raising in Icelandic. In J. Maling & A. Zaenen (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics: Modern Icelandic Syntax (pp. 41–69). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sigurðsson, H. Á. (2007). Argument features, clausal structure and the computation. In T. Bhattachayra, E. Reuland & G. Spathas (Eds.), Argument Structure (pp. 121–158). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thomason, S. G. & Kaufman, T. (1988). Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thráinsson, H. (1979). On Complementation in Icelandic. New York: Garland.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2007). The Syntax of Icelandic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vikner, S. (1995). Verb Movement and Expletive Subjects in the Germanic Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wallenberg, J. C., Ingason, A. K., Sigurðsson, E. F. & Rögnvaldsson, E. (2011). Icelandic Parsed Historical Corpus (IcePaHC), version 0.9. [URL]
Weenen, A. de Leeuw van (Ed.). (1993). The Icelandic Homily Book: Perg. 15 4o in the Royal Library, Stockholm. Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zaenen, A., Engdahl, E. & Maling, J. (2017). Subject properties in presentational sentences in Icelandic and Swedish. Bergen Language and Linguistics Studies, 8(1), 260–281. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Booth, Hannah
2024. Time-clefts, expletives and orality in Early Icelandic saga narratives. Evolutionary Linguistic Theory 6:1-2 ► pp. 27 ff. DOI logo
Booth, Hannah & Kim A. Groothuis
2024. Discourse-related expletives: Challenges and opportunities. Open Linguistics 10:1 DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue