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Part of
The Determinants of Diachronic Stability
Edited by Anne Breitbarth, Miriam Bouzouita, Lieven Danckaert and Melissa Farasyn
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 254] 2019
► pp. 69–100

Chapter 4
Stability and change in Icelandic weather verbs

Syntax, semantics and argument structure

| Yale University
ORCID logo | University of Iceland
Contrary to previous claims, weather verbs in Icelandic are not “no-argument” predicates. Both in Old and Modern Icelandic they can appear with an NP either in nominative, accusative or dative case. It can be shown that in Modern Icelandic the NPs are subjects, and this is likely to have been the case in Old Icelandic. Diachronically, in addition to some changes in subject case marking (Nominative Substitution and Impersonalization), the main innovations in weather verbs involve the introduction of the “expletive” elements það and hann. On the whole, however, there is considerable stability in the use of weather verbs in the history of Icelandic. Not only are the lexical items nearly all the same, but a clear continuity in the syntax of weather expressions can be documented.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The empirical evidence
    • 2.1The survey
    • 2.2Weather verbs without an NP
    • 2.3Weather verbs with an NP
      • 2.3.1Nominative
      • 2.3.2Accusative
      • 2.3.3Dative
  • 3.Changes from Old to Modern Icelandic
    • 3.1Changes in case marking
      • 3.1.1Nominative Substitution
      • 3.1.2Impersonalization
    • 3.2The filler það
    • 3.3The quasi-argument hann
  • 4.Stability from Old to Modern Icelandic
    • 4.1Change or stability?
    • 4.2Weather verbs with NPs
      • 4.2.1Change in case marking but not in grammatical function
      • 4.2.2Overt arguments with weather verbs in Modern Icelandic
      • 4.2.3Overt arguments with weather verbs in Old Icelandic
    • 4.3The position of the finite weather verb
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 March 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.254.04sig
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