Front field negation in spoken Swedish
A regional archaism?
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.
References (27)
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]
.
Secondary sources
Ahlström, Gunnar. 1974.
Det moderna genombrottet i Nordens litteratur
. Stockholm: Rabén & Sjögren.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Bergroth, Hugo. 1917.
Finlandssvenska: Handledning till undvikande av provinsialismer i tal och skrift
. Helsingfors: Schildts.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987.
Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Christensen, Ken Ramshøj. 2005. Interfaces: Negation – Syntax – Brain. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Department of English, University of Aarhus and the MR Research Centre, Aarhus University Hospital. Online: [URL]
.
Diderichsen, Paul. 1946.
Elementær dansk grammatik
. København: Gyldendal.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Eriksson, Mats. 1998. “Dialog i drama och verklighet: En sekvens hos Norén och i ett vardagligt samtal.” In
Samtalsstudier
, ed. by Hanna Lehti-Eklund, 43–56. Helsingfors: Helsingfors universitet.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Hakulinen, Auli, Maria Vilkuna, Riitta Korhonen, Vesa Koivisto, Tarja Riitta Heinonen, and Irja Alho. 2004.
Iso suomen kielioppi
. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Herman, Vimala. 1995.
Dramatic Discourse: Dialogue as Interaction in Plays
. London: Routledge.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Holmer, Arthur. 2006. “The place of Swedish in word order typology.”
Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung (STUF)
59 (1): 76–102.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Huldén, Lars. 1995. ”Österbottnisk negationslära.”
Svenska landsmål och svenskt folkliv
118: 175–186.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Josephson, Olle. 2004.
Ju: Ifrågasatta självklarheter om svenskan, engelskan och alla andra språk i Sverige
. Stockholm: Norstedts Akademiska förlag.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Keevallik, Leelo. 2011. “The terms of not knowing.” In
The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation
, ed. by Tanya Stivers, Lorenza Mondada, and Jakob Steensig, 184–206. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lindström, Anna. 2003. “Kammarjungfrun och vårdbiträdet: Språk och sociala relationer i ett 1700-talsdrama och i 1990-talets hemtjänst.” In
Svenska på scen: Språk och språkanvändning i svensk dramatext från tre sekler
, ed. by Siv Strömquist, 152–183. Uppsala: Hallgren & Fallgren.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lindström, Jan. 2007. “Initial Clausal Negation – A Nordic Areal Feature.” In
Linguistics Festival, May 2006, Bremen
, ed. by Andreas Ammann, 31–58. Bochum: Brockmeyer.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lundström, Gudrun. 1939.
Studier i nyländsk syntax
. Stockholm: Norstedt & Söner.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Melander Marttala, Ulla, and Siv Strömquist. 2001.
Korpusen Svensk dramadialog: Användarhandbok
. Uppsala: Institutionen för nordiska språk, Uppsala universitet.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Saari, Mirja. 1995. “Synpunkter på svenskt språkbruk i Sverige och Finland.”
Folkmålsstudier
36: 75–108.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Strömquist, Siv. 2003. “Svensk dramatik på svenska scener under tre hundra år. In
Svenska på scen: Språk och språkanvändning i svensk dramatext från tre sekler
, ed. by Siv Strömquist, 12–36. Uppsala: Hallgren & Fallgren.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Teleman, Ulf, Staffan Hellberg, and Erik Andersson. 1999.
Svenska Akademiens grammatik, vol. 4: Satser och meningar
. Stockholm: Svenska Akademien.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Lindström, Jan, Camilla Lindholm, Inga-Lill Grahn & Martina Huhtamäki
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 july 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.