In:Ditransitives in Germanic Languages: Synchronic and diachronic aspects
Edited by Eva Zehentner, Melanie Röthlisberger and Timothy Colleman
[Studies in Germanic Linguistics 7] 2023
► pp. 299–324
Get fulltext
Ditransitives in Faroese
The distribution of IO/DO and PP
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.
For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.
Published online: 8 August 2023
https://doi.org/10.1075/sigl.7.09uss
https://doi.org/10.1075/sigl.7.09uss
Abstract
This paper examines the acceptability of the double object and
prepositional frames for ditransitives in Faroese. We build on previous
literature which has discussed various factors which may influence speakers’
use of one frame over the other. We report the findings of a judgment study
in which we examined the degree to which semantic properties of verbs and
length of the indirect object affect speakers’ acceptability of each frame.
Our findings suggest that verbal semantics affect the acceptability of the
prepositional construction, but not the double object construction. Our
findings, however, do not directly support a heavy-late effect, unlike what
has been reported in previous literature on Faroese (most notably by Fiebig 2012).
Keywords: Faroese, ditransitives, verbal semantics, drift
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Ditransitives in insular Scandinavian
- 3.Overview of previous observations about Faroese
- 4.Methods and results
- 4.1Methods
- 4.2Results
- 5.Conclusion
Acknowledgements Notes References
References (37)
Barðdal, Jóhanna. 2001. “Case
in Icelandic – A Synchronic, Diachronic and Comparative
Approach.” Doctoral
dissertation, Lund: Lund University.
. 2008. Productivity:
Evidence from Case and Argument Structure in
Icelandic. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Barðdal, Jóhanna, Kristian Emil Kristoffersen, and Andreas Sveen A. 2011. “West
Scandinavian Ditransitives as a Family of Constructions: With a
Special Attention to the Norwegian ‘V-REFL-NP’
Construction.” Linguistics 49 (1): 53–104.
Beavers, John. 2011. “An
Aspectual Analysis of Ditransitive Verbs of Caused Possession in
English.” Journal of
Semantics 28: 1–54.
Bresnan, Joan. 2007. “Is
Syntactic Knowledge Probabilistic? Experiments with the English
Dative
Alternation.” In Roots:
Linguistics in Search of Its Evidential
Base, ed. by Sam Featherston and Wolfgang Sternefeld, 75–96. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Bresnan, Joan, Anna Cueni, Tatiana Nikitina, and Harald Baayen. 2007. “Predicting
the Dative
Alternation.” In Cognitive
Foundations of Interpretation, ed.
by Gerlof Boume, Irene Krämer, and Joost Zwarts, 69–94. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Science.
Bresnan, Joan, and Tatiana Nikitina. 2008. “The
Gradience of the Dative
Alternation.” In Reality
Exploration and Discovery: Pattern Interaction in Language and
Life, ed. by Linda Uyechi and Lian Hee Wee, 161–182. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
Bruening, Benjamin. 2010a. “Ditransitive
Asymmetries and a Theory of Idiom
Formation”. Linguistic
Inquiry 41: 519–562.
. 2010b. “Double
Object Constructions Disguised as Prepositional
Datives”. Linguistic
Inquiry 41: 287–305.
. 2018. “Double
Object Constructions and Prepositional Dative Constructions are
Distinct: A Reply to Ormazabal & Romero
2012.” Linguistic
Inquiry 49: 123–150.
Collins, Chris, and Höskuldur Thráinsson. 1996. “VP-Internal
Structure and Object Shift in
Icelandic.” Linguistic
Inquiry 27: 391–444.
Fiebig, Julika. 2012. “At
geva fiskimonnum
skattalætta. At geva skattalætta til fiskimenn. En undersøkelse av ditransitive konstruktioner i færøysk skriftspråk.” MA
thesis, Oslo: ILN.
Green, Georgia M. 1974. Semantics
and Syntactic
Regularity. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Hansen, Erik, and Lars Heltoft. 2011. Grammatik
over det Danske Sprog
III. Sætningen og dens
konstruktion. København: Syddansk Universitetsforlag.
Harley, Heidi. 2002. “Possession
and the Double Object
Construction.” Yearbook of Linguistic
Variation 2: 29–68.
Harley, Heidi, and Hyun Kyoung Jung. 2015. “In
Support of the PHAVE Analysis of the Double Object
Construction.” Linguistic
Inquiry 46: 703–730.
Holmberg, Anders, and Christer Platzack. 1995. The
Role of Inflection in Scandinavian
Syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Indriðadóttir, Ingunn Hreinberg. 2017. “Weight
Effects and Heavy NP Shift in Icelandic and
Faroese.” Working Papers in
Scandinavian
Syntax 98: 131–146.
Jónsson, Jóhannes Gísli. 2000. “Case
and Double Objects in
Icelandic.” Leeds Working Papers in
Linguistics 8: 71–94.
. 2009. “Verb
Classes and Dative Objects in Insular
Scandinavian.” In The
Role of Semantic, Pragmatic and Discourse Factors in the Development
of Case, ed. by Jóhanna Barðdal, and Shobana Chelliah, 203–224. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
. 2017. “Eignarfallsandlöl
í færeysku
danskvæðunum”. In Bók
Jógvan, ed. by Zakaris S. Hansen, Anfinnur Johansen, Hjalmar P. Petersen, and Lena Reinert, 199–213. Tórshavn: Faroe University Press.
Maling, Joan. 2002. “Það
rignir þágufalli á Íslandi: Verbs with Dative Objects in
Icelandic.” Íslenskt
mál 24: 31–105.
Malmsten, Solveig. 2015. Dative
i modern färöiska. En fallstudie i grammatisk
förändring. Uppsala Universitet: Skrifter utgivna av Institutionen för Nordiska Språk vid Uppsala Universitet.
Oehrle, Richard T. 1976. “The
Grammatical Status of the English Dative
Alternation.” Doctoral
dissertation. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Petersen, Hjalmar P. 2010. The
Dynamics of Faroese-Danish Language
Contact. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter.
2017. “Variation
in Dative in
Faroese.” In Syntactic
Variation in Insular Scandinavian, ed.
by Höskuldur Thráinsson, Caroline Heycock, Hjalmar P. Petersen and Zakaris S. Hansen, 113–141. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Rappaport Hovav, Malka, and Beth Levin. 2008. “The
English Dative Alternation: The Case for Verb
Sensitivity.” Journal of
Linguistics 44: 129–167.
Þráinsson, Höskuldur, Hjalmar P. Petersen, Jógvan í Lon Jacobsen, and Zakaris S. Hansen. 2012. Faroese:
An Overview and Reference Grammar. Tórshavn
and Reykjavík: Faroe University Press and University of Iceland [published first time in
2004 by Tórshavn: Føroya
Fróðskaparfelag].
Ussery, Cherlon. 2017. “Double
Objects Again…but in
Icelandic.” In A
Schrift to Fest Kyle Johnson, ed.
by Nicholas LaCara, Keir Moulton, and Anne-Michelle Tessier. Linguistics Open Access Publications. 1.
