Cover not available
Part of
Information Structure and Syntactic Change in Germanic and Romance Languages
Edited by Kristin Bech and Kristine Gunn Eide
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 213] 2014
► pp. 173–200

The cognitive status of null subject referents in Old Norse and their Modern Norwegian counterparts

| University of Oslo

This paper investigates the distribution of pronouns in Old Norse and Modern Norwegian, focusing mainly on Old Norse referential null subjects and their counterparts in Modern Norwegian. The theoretical starting point is the Givenness Hierarchy of Gundel et al. (1993), which predicts that null and unstressed pronouns can only be used appropriately if their referents have the cognitive status in focus, meaning, in short, that their referents must be “[…] at the current center of attention” (Gundel et al. 1993: 279). I will argue that the referents of Old Norse null subjects are not necessarily in focus, whereas Modern Norwegian unstressed subject pronouns seem to require this. I will propose an analysis of Old Norse null subjects whereby cognitive status is supplemented by semantic and morphological factors.

Published online: 7 May 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.213.07kin
References
Akselberg, Gunnstein
2006 Etterord. Den legendariske olavssoga. Ei fullstendig soge om Olav den heilage før Snorre. In Den legendariske Olavssoga , Kåre Flokenes (ed.), 107–126. Stavanger: Dreyer Bok.Google Scholar
Barbosa, Pilar
2009 Two kinds of subject pro . Studia Linguistica 63(1): 2–58. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Borer, Hagit
1986 I-Subjects. Linguistic Inquiry 17: 375–416.Google Scholar
Christoffersen, Marit
2003 Noe om bindeord i eldre norsk, særlig om ok, en og nema . In Språk i endring. Indre norsk språkhistorie, Jan Terje Faarlund (ed.), 13–28. Oslo: Novus forlag.Google Scholar
Dimitriadis, Alexis
1995 When pro-drop languages don’t: On overt pronominal subjects in Greek. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 2(2): 45–60. [URL]>
Erteschick-Shir, Nomi
1997  The Dynamics of Focus Structure . Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Faarlund, Jan Terje
2003 Når alle informantane er døde. In På språkjakt – problemer og utfordringer i språkvitenskapelig datainnsamling, Janne Bondi Johannesen (ed.), 5–30. Oslo: Unipub forlag.Google Scholar
2004  The Syntax of Old Norse . Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
2012 Fråvær av noko eller nærvær av ingenting. Om nullsubjekt og andre manglar. In Fra holtijaR til holting. Språkhistoriske og språksosiologiske artikler til Arne Torp på 70-årsdagen, Unn Røyneland & Hans-Olav Enger (eds), 83–98. Oslo: Novus forlag.Google Scholar
Falk, Cecilia
1993  Non-referential Subjects in the History of Swedish . Lund: Department of Scandinavian Languages.Google Scholar
Flokenes, Kåre
(ed) 2006  Den legendariske Olavssoga . Stavanger: Dreyer Bok.Google Scholar
Gundel, Jeanette K., Bassene, Mamadou, Gordon, Bryan, Humnick, Linda & Khalfaoui, Amel
2010 Testing predictions of the Givenness Hierarchy framework: A crosslinguistic investigation. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 1770–1785. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gundel, Jeanette K., Borthen, Kaja & Fretheim, Thorstein
1999 The role of context in pronominal reference to higher order entities in English and Norwegian. In CONTEXT’99, LNAI 1688, P. Bouquet et al.. (eds), 475–478. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Gundel, Jeanette K., Hedberg, Nancy & Zacharski, Ron
1993 Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions in discourse. Language 69(2): 274–307. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gundel, Jeanette K., Hegarty, Michael & Borthen, Kaja
2003 Cognitive status, information structure, and pronominal reference to clausally introduced entities. Journal of Logic, Language and Information 12: 281–299. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holmberg, Anders
2010 Null subject parameters. In Parametric Variation: Null Subjects in Minimalist Theory , Theresa Bieberauer, Anders Holmberg, Ian Roberts & Michelle Sheehan (eds), 88–124. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Holmberg, Anders & Sheehan, Michelle
2010 Control into finite clauses in partial null-subject languages. In Parametric Variation: Null Subjects in Minimalist Theory , Theresa Bieberauer, Anders Holmberg, Ian Roberts & Michelle Sheehan (eds), 125–152. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Håkansson, David
2008 Syntaktisk variation och förändring: En studie av subjektslösa satser i fornsvenska. PhD dissertation, Lund University.Google Scholar
Jelinek, Eloise
& Carnie Andrew 2003 Argument hierarchies and the mapping principle. In Formal Approaches to Function in Grammar [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 62], Andrew Carnie, Heidi Harley, MaryAnn Willie & Eloise Jelinek (eds), 265–296. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kinn, Kari
2010 Formelle subjekter i norsk – en diakron undersøkelse. MA dissertation, University of Oslo.Google Scholar
2011 Overt non-referential subjects and subject-verb agreement in Middle Norwegian. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 88: 21–50.Google Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud
1994 Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topic, Focus, and the Mental Representations of Discourse Referents. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Magnusson, Erik
2003 Subject omission and verb initial declaratives in Swedish. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 71: 103–143.Google Scholar
Mørck, Endre
1990 Ellipsis of the subject of main clauses in Middle Norwegian. In Tromsø Linguistics in the Eighties , Ernst Håkon Jahr & Ove Lorentz (eds), 356–368. Oslo: Novus.Google Scholar
2011 Leddstillinga i mellomnorske heilsetninger. Funksjons- og feltanalyse og materialpresentasjon. Oslo: Novus.Google Scholar
2013 Mellomnorsk språk. In Handbok i norrøn filologi (2. ed.), Odd Einar Haugen (ed), 640–690. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget.Google Scholar
Mörnsjö, Maria
2002 V1 Declaratives in Spoken Swedish. Syntax, Information Structure, and Prosodic Pattern. PhD dissertation, Lund University.Google Scholar
Nygaard, Magnus
1893 Udeladelse af subjekt; “subjektlöse” sætninger i den norröne sprog (den klassiske sagastil). Arkiv för nordisk filologi 10: 1–25.Google Scholar
1966  Norrøn syntax . Oslo: H. Aschehoug & co. (W. Nygaard).Google Scholar
Rindal, Magnus
1993 Norsk språk 1350–1500 Gammalnorsk eller mellomnorsk? In Historisk språkvitenskap/Historical linguistics, Ernst Håkon Jahr & Ove Lorentz (eds), 395–404. Oslo: Novus.Google Scholar
Roberts, Ian & Holmberg, Anders
2010 Introduction: parameters in minimalist theory. In Parametric Variation: Null Subjects in Minimalist Theory , Theresa Bieberauer, Anders Holmberg, Ian Roberts & Michelle Sheehan (eds), 1–57. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Rosenkvist, Henrik
2009 Referential null subjects in Germanic languages – An overview. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 84: 151–180.Google Scholar
Rosén, Victoria
1996 Empty Pronouns in Vietnamese. In Reference and Referent Accessibility [Pragamitics & Beyond New Series 38], Thorstein Fretheim & Jeanette K. Gundel (eds), 251–262. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sigurðsson, Halldór Ármann
1993 Argument-drop in Old Icelandic. Lingua 89: 247–280. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sigurðsson, Halldór Ármann & Egerland, Verner
2009 Impersonal null-subjects in Icelandic and elsewhere. Studia Linguistica 63(1): 158–185. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stjernholm, Karine
de Vibe 2008 Subjektsellipser. Fins pro i norsk talespråk? MA dissertation, University of Oslo.Google Scholar
Torp, Arne & Vikør, Lars S
2003  Hovuddrag i norsk språkhistorie, 3rd edn). Oslo: Gyldendal Akademisk.Google Scholar
Vallduví, Enric & Engdahl, Elisabet
1996 The linguistic realization of information packaging. Linguistics 34(3):459–519. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walkden, George
2012 Syntactic Reconstruction and Proto-Germanic. PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
Wiggen, Geir
1975 Utelatelse av setningsledd. Ei undersøking av utelatelsenes art, deres grunner, funksjoner og språksosiologiske struktur, basert på talemålsmateriale fra Oslo. Norskrift 3: 1–47.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Farasyn, Melissa & Anne Breitbarth
2016. Nullsubjekte im Mittelniederdeutschen. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 138:4 ► pp. 524 ff. DOI logo
Kinn, Kari
2016. Referential vs. non-referential null subjects in Middle Norwegian. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 39:3 ► pp. 277 ff. DOI logo
Kinn, Kari, Kristian A. Rusten & George Walkden
2016. Null Subjects in Early Icelandic. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 28:1 ► pp. 31 ff. DOI logo
Rusten, Kristian A.
2019. Referential Null Subjects in Early English, DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 march 2024. 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.