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Diachronic Corpus Pragmatics
Edited by Irma Taavitsainen, Andreas H. Jucker and Jukka Tuominen
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 243] 2014
► pp. 237–254

Front field negation in spoken Swedish

A regional archaism?

ORCID logo | University of Helsinki

The Swedish negating adverb inte ‘not’ usually occurs in the middle of a clause but can also occur in the first constituent position, in the syntactic front field. Fronted negation is common in the spoken varieties of Swedish in Finland, but less typical in the spoken varieties in Sweden. The question is whether or not front field negation is an archaism in Finland Swedish. As there are no recordings of older spoken Swedish, a corpus of drama dialogue from 1725–2000 is consulted. The results show that front field negation is more frequent in the plays from the older periods and matches the pragmatic contexts that are typical of the construction in Present-day Finland Swedish. This historical material suggests that front field negation belongs to an older conversational style in Swedish that is still prevalent in Finland Swedish and it is also reinforced by a parallel usage in Finnish.

Published online: 11 March 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.243.14lin
References

Datasets

FISC
= En finlandssvensk textkorpus [A Finland Swedish text corpus] 1995 Project leader: Mirja Saari. Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies, University of Helsinki. Online: [URL] .
GRIS
= Samtalsspråkets grammatik [the kernel corpus of Swedish conversations within the project Grammar in Conversation: A Study of Swedish ] 2001 Project leaders: Jan Anward, and Bengt Nordberg. More information: [URL] .
HS:V1
= Helsingforssvenska (NorDiga) [a collection of Swedish conversations in the Helsinki region] 2003 Project leader: Jan Lindström. Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies, University of Helsinki. Online: [URL] .
HUSA
= Språk och attityder bland helsingforssvenska ungdomar (NorDiga) [Language and attitudes among Swedish speaking youth in Helsinki] 1994 Project leader: Mirja Saari. Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies, University of Helsinki. Online: [URL] .
INK = Interaktion i en institutionell context
[Interaction in an institutional context] 2000 Project leader: Anne-Marie Londen. Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies, University of Helsinki. Not publically available.
SAM
= Svenska samtal i Helsingfors (NorDiga) [Swedish conversations in Helsinki] 1991 Project leader: Anne-Marie Londen. Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies, University of Helsinki. Online: [URL] .
SD
= Svensk dramadialog [Drama dialogue in Sweden] 2001 Project leader: Mats Thelander. Department of Scandinavian languages, University of Uppsala. More information: [URL] .
SUC
= Stockholm–Umeå Corpus 1997 Project leaders: Gunnel Källgren, and Eva Ejerhed. Universities of Stockholm och Umeå. Online: [URL] .

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Cited by 2 other publications

Lindström, Jan, Camilla Lindholm, Inga-Lill Grahn & Martina Huhtamäki
2020. Chapter 9. Consecutive clause combinations in instructing activities. In Emergent Syntax for Conversation [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 32], ► pp. 245 ff. DOI logo
Rosenkvist, Henrik
2021. Clause-final negative particles in varieties of Swedish. Studies in Language 45:3 ► pp. 598 ff. DOI logo

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