In this paper, we demonstrate that adjective endings in the Germanic languages do not pattern uniformly. We illustrate this with nine syntactic contexts: possessives involving proper names and pronominals, embedded and unembedded proper names, “disagreeing” pronominal DPs, appositives, definite adjectives, vocatives, and discontinuous noun phrases. We show that German is subject to lexical and structural conditions but Scandinavian is semantic in nature. In German, the weak endings are feature-reduced forms, which always have a specific local relation to a certain type of determiner, which triggers the relevant feature reduction. Adopting Distributed Morphology, this reduction in features is implemented by Impoverishment. In Scandinavian, the weak endings are an agreement reflex of a semantic feature. We follow others in that adjectives are in – what is traditionally called – Spec,AgrP. We propose that the relevant semantic feature is on Agr and the adjective agrees with it. Given the language-specific conditions, the strong endings surface in the remaining contexts in both types of languages as the elsewhere case.
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Cited by 8 other publications
Julien, Marit
2016. Possessive predicational vocatives in Scandinavian. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 19:2 ► pp. 75 ff.
Julien, Marit & Dorian Roehrs
2023. Phrasal Proper Names in German and Norwegian. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 26:1
Pfaff, Alexander
2023. The Prehistory of Weak Adjectival Phrases in Old Norse. In Internal and External Causes of Language Change, ► pp. 19 ff.
2015. Inflections on pre-nominal adjectives in Germanic: Main types, subtypes, and subset relations. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 18:3 ► pp. 213 ff.
Sahel, Said
2022. Entwicklung und Durchsetzung der Monoflexion im 18. Jahrhundert. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 144:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
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2024. (Den) eneste måten – When the Prenominal Determiner Can Be Omitted from Norwegian Double Definite Phrases. Journal of Germanic Linguistics► pp. 1 ff.
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