Strong and weak adjectives in Old Swedish
Rico Simke | Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
In modern Swedish, weakly inflected adjectives are obligatory in definite noun phrases. However, strong adjectival forms in definite contexts are still rather common in early mediaeval manuscripts. But this fact has attracted surprisingly little attention by linguists, and the classic handbook on language history rather conveys the idea that strong adjectives in general were restricted to semantically indefinite noun phrases already in the first written records. This article presents empirical evidence that strong adjectival forms appear in semantically definite noun phrases to a considerable – but decreasing – extent in Old Swedish texts. It is also argued that weak adjectives only appear together with formal definiteness markers, which means that strong adjectival forms are not ruled out from semantically definite noun phrases until obligatory definiteness marking is fully established.
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[URL]
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Cited by
Cited by 2 other publications
Coppock, Elizabeth & Elisabet Engdahl
2016.
Quasi-definites in Swedish: Elative superlatives and emphatic assertion.
Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 34:4
► pp. 1181 ff.
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Reunited after 1000 years. The development of definite articles in Icelandic.
Nordic Journal of Linguistics 42:02
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