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Studies in Övdalian Morphology and Syntax: New research on a lesser-known Scandinavian language
Edited by Kristine Bentzen, Henrik Rosenkvist and Janne Bondi Johannessen †
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 221] 2015
► pp. 107–135

The syntax and meaning of subject doubling in Övdalian

| University of Gothenburg
This chapter contains a presentation and an analysis of Övdalian subject doubling. After discussing elicitation techniques and methods, I present the actual data. Next, I turn to the syntactic restrictions of the construction, demonstrating that a V2-context (i.e., a root context), an initial subject and a certain type of adverbial expressing speaker attitude are obligatory for this construction. Also subject doubling in other languages is introduced and discussed, with a focus on doubling in Dutch dialects. It is argued that the meaning of the Övdalian subject doubling construction is to express polarity focus. In the final section of the paper, the hypothesis that the subject doubler is not a pronoun, but rather a realisation of φ-agreement in a functional polarity head (Σ), is launched.
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Published online: 22 January 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/la.221.05ros
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