Cover not available

In:Thetics and Categoricals
Edited by Werner Abraham, Elisabeth Leiss and Yasuhiro Fujinawa
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 262] 2020
► pp. 69–104

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

Presentational and related constructions in Norwegian with reference to German

 | NTNU, Trondheim
 | NTNU, Trondheim
Published online: 22 July 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.262.03hel
Abstract
This paper investigates constructions in Norwegian and German with an expletive pronoun in subject position, and for Norwegian also in object position. The discussion covers presentational, impersonal and extrapositional constructions in both languages, and in Norwegian also the ‘light reflexive’ seg in its interaction with presentationals. We relate the discussion to a parameter of theticity, whereby sentences with an expletive subject will count as thetic while sentences with a content-full NP subject will count as categorical. Also sentences with expletive object are argued to have a thetic value. Categorical sentences on their side are ranked according to a parameter of transitivity, accounting for constraints on presentational constructions in Norwegian, and seen as constituting an opposite dimension of constructional values to that of theticity.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Extraposition and impersonals
    • 1.2Presentationals
    • 1.3Issues
  • 2.Norwegian NPpres not having status as object
    • 2.1Presentationals with light reflexives
      • 2.1.1Presentationals with light reflexives
      • 2.1.2Presentationals with light reflexives in secondary predicate constructions
    • 2.2Double full NPs in presentationals
    • 2.3Semantic role of NPpres
  • 3.Status of NPpres in Norwegian as subject
  • 4.Expletive pronouns as object
    • 4.1Constructions with expletive pronouns as object
    • 4.2Some formal consequences: Secondary predicate constructions (SCPR), and notions of ‘licensing’
  • 5.Theoretical considerations: Transitivity and theticity
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
References (51)
References
Askedal, John Ole. 1986. On ergativity in Modern Norwegian. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 9: 25–45. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bach, Emmon. 1986. The algebra of events. Linguistics and Philosophy 9(1): 5–16.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barwise, Jon & Perry, 1983. John, Situations and Attitudes, London and Cambridge, MA MIT Press,Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bjerre, Anne & Bjerre, Tavs. 2008b. Danish there-constructions with transitive verbs. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Stefan Müller (ed.), 46–66. Stanford CA: CSLI.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Börjars, Kersti & Vincent, Nigel. 2005. Position versus function in Scandinavian presentational constructions. In Proceedings of the LFG05 Conference, Miriam Butt & Tracy Holloway King (eds), 54–72. Stanford CA: CSLI.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brentano, Franz. 1995. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, trans. by Antos C. Runcurello, D. B. Terell & Linda L. McAlister. London: Routledge. (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (1874, 1924), Sections V–IX, 1973).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan. 2001. Lexical Functional Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Copestake, Ann. 2002. Implementing Typed Feature Structure Grammars. Stanford CA: CSLI.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Copestake, Ann, Flickinger, Dan, Pollard, Carl & Sag, Ivan. 2005. Minimal recursion semantics. Journal of Language and Computation 3: 281–332. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Creissels, Denis. 2007. Impersonal and related constructions: A typological approach. <[URL]> (21 March 2020).
Creissels. Denis. 2016. Transitivity, valency, and voice. Ms, European Summer School in Linguistic Typology, Porquerolles.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dalrymple, Mary. 2001. Lexical Functional Grammar [Syntax and Semantics 34]. New York NY: Academic Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Diderichsen, Paul. 1946. Elementær dansk grammatikk. Københvn: Gyldendal.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dowty, David. 1991. Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. Language 67: 547–619. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Drubig, Hans Bernhard. 1992. Zur Frage der grammatischen Repräsentation thetischer und kategorischer Sätze. In Informationsstruktur und Grammatik, Joachim Jacobs (ed.). Linguistische Berichte, Sonderheft 4: 142–195. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fenstad, Jens Erik, Halvorsen, Per-Kristian, Langholm, Tore & van Benthem, Johan. 1985. Equations, Schemata and Situations: A Framework for Linguistics Semantics [Technical Report 29]. Stanford CA: CSLI.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Frajzyngier, Zygmunt. 2019. ‘Reflexives’ coding point of view of the subject. Presentation at SLE, Leipzig.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gast, Volker & Haas, Florian. 2011. On the distribution of subject properties in formulaic presentationals of Germanic and Romance. A diachronic-typological approach. In Impersonal Constructions. A Cross-linguistic Perspective [Studies in Language Companion Series 124], Andrej Malchukov & Anna Siewierska (eds), 127–166. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hellan, Lars. 1986. Some core features of Norwegian syntax. Lecture, University of Tilburg.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1988. Anaphora in Norwegian and the Theory of Grammar. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. On ‘weak’ personal pronouns in Norwegian. Presented at Workshop on Object Shift, University of Gothenburg.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2019. Construction-based Compositional Grammar. Journal of Logic, Language and Information 128: 101–130. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hellan, Lars & Platzack, Christer. 1999. Pronouns in Scandinavian languages. An overview. In Eurotyp: Clitics in the Languages of Europe 5 [Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 20–5], Henk van Riemsdijk (ed.), 123–144. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hellan, Lars & Bruland, Tore. 2015. A cluster of applications around a Deep Grammar. In Proceedings from The Language & Technology Conference (LTC) 2015, Zygmunt Vetulani & Joseph Mariani (eds). Poznan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hellan, Lars & Beermann, Dorothee. 2019. Thetische Repräsentationen und die Präsentativkonstruktion im Norwegischen und Deutschen. In Zur übereinzelsprachlichen Architektur von Thetik und Kategorik [Studien zur deutschen Grammatik 97], Werner Abraham, Elisabeth Leiss & Shin Tanaka (eds), 43–66. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Holen, Gordana Iljic. 2007. Automatic anaphora resolution for Norwegian. In 6th Discourse Anaphora and Anaphor Resolution Colloquium, DAARC 2007, Lagos, Portugal, March 29–30, Antonio Branco (ed.), 151–166 Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Holmberg, A. 1986. Word Order and Syntactic Features in the Scandinavian Languages and English. PhD dissertation, University of Stockholm.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. & Thompson, Sandra A. 1980. Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language 56: 251–299. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kim, Jong-Bok and Sag, Ivan. 2005. English Object Extraposition: A Constraint-Based Approach. In: Müller, St. (ed) Proceedings of the HPSG05 Conference. CSLI Publications. [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kiss, K. (ed.). 2005. Object Shift. Special issue of Theoretical Linguistics 31(1–2).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kuroda, Sige-Yuki. 1972. The categorical and the thetic judgement. Evidence from Japanese syntax. Foundations of Language 9: 153–185.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ladusaw, William A. 1994. Thetic and categorical, stage and individual, weak and strong. In Proceedings of SALT 4, Mandy Harvey & Lynn Santelmann (eds), 220–229. Ithaca NY: Cornell University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topic, Focus, and the Mental Representation of Discourse Referents [Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 71]. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lødrup, Helge. 1999. Linking and optimality in the Norwegian presentational focus construction. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 22: 205–230. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2000. Underspecification in Lexical Mapping Theory: The case of Norwegian existentials and resultatives. In Argument Realization, Miriam Butt & Tracy Holloway King (eds), 171–188. Stanford CA: CSLI.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marty, Anton. 1918. Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. II, Part 1: Abteilung. Halle an der Saale: Max Niemeyer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mikkelsen, Line. 2002. Reanalyzing the definiteness effect: Evidence from Danish. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 69: 1–75.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Montague, Richard. 1974. The proper treatment of quantification in ordinary English. In Formal Philosophy, Richmond Thomason (ed.), 141–162. New Haven CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Platzack, Christer. 1983. Existential sentences in English, Swedish, German and Icelandic. In Papers from the seventh Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, Fred Karlsson (ed.), 80–100. Helsinki: University of HelsinkiGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pollard, Carl & Sag, Ivan. 1994. Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Postal, Paul M. and Geoffrey K. Pullum. 1988. Expletive Noun Phrases in Subcategorized Positions. Linguistic Inquiry 19.4: 635–670.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pütz, Herbert. 1975. Über die Syntax der Pronominalform es im modernen Deutsch [Studien zur deutschen Grammatik 3]. Tübingen: Gunther Narr.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rothstein, Susan. 2004. Predicates and their Subjects. Berlin: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. 1995. “Theticity” and VS order: A case study. Sprachtypologie und Universalien-forschung STUF 48: 3–31.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1996. Theticity [Arbeitspapier 27 (Neue Folge)]. Köln: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität zu Köln.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sveen, Andreas. 1996. Norwegian Impersonal Actives and the Unaccusative Hypothesis. PhD dissertation, University of Oslo.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tesnière, Lucien. 1959. Éleménts de syntaxe structurale. Paris: Klincksieck.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vikner, Sten. 1995. Verb Movement and Expletive Subjects in the Germanic Languages. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1997. Andreas Sveen: Norwegian impersonal actives and the unaccusative hypothesis. Norsk Lingvistisk Tidsskrift Årgang 15.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zaenen, Annie, Engdahl, Elisabet & Maling, Joan. 2017. Subject properties in presentational sentences in Icelandic and Swedish. In The Very Model of a Modern Linguist: In Honor of Helge Dyvik, Victoria Rosén & Koenrad De Smedt (eds). Bergen: Bergen Language and Linguistic Studies. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Åfarli, Tor. 1992. The Syntax of Norwegian Passive Constructions [Linguistik Aktuel/Linguistics Today 7]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Hellan, Lars
2022. A Valence Catalogue for Norwegian. In Natural Language Processing in Artificial Intelligence — NLPinAI 2021 [Studies in Computational Intelligence, 999], ► pp. 49 ff. DOI logo
Schultze-Berndt, Eva
2022. When subjects frame the clause: discontinuous noun phrases as an iconic strategy for marking thetic constructions. Linguistics 60:3 ► pp. 865 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 november 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