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Variation and change in the Swedish periphrastic passive: a constructional approach

  • Dominika Skrzypek EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: December 18, 2023

Abstract

This paper examines the development of the periphrastic passive voice construction in Swedish between 1300 and 1750, from the point of view of constructional change. The development involves the rise of a new auxiliary, bliva ‘remain’, originally a lexical loan from Middle Low German, which after a period of variation replaces the older auxiliary varda ‘become’. The findings reveal that the origins of the periphrastic passive construction may be found in mutative constructions with varda and adjectival complements, and the same development is then found with the loanword bliva, delayed by some hundred years. The results of quantitative analysis place the turning point in the development between 1450 and 1550. The paper relates the variation and change in passive auxiliaries to Diachronic Construction Grammar.


Corresponding author: Dominika Skrzypek, Department of Scandinavian Studies, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland, E-mail:

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Science Center (NCN), Poland (grant number 2021/41/B/HS2/00011). I would like to thank the editors of the journal and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive comments. I would also like to thank Elisabet Engdahl, Jan-Ola Östman, Alicja Piotrowska and Marta Woźnicka, who read earlier versions of the manuscript for their suggestions of improvement, as well as the audiences of Grammatikkollokviet in Stockholm/Uppsala, Forskarseminariet i nordiska språk in Lund and Högre seminarium in Uppsala for challenging questions and encouragment.

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Received: 2022-09-23
Accepted: 2023-04-11
Published Online: 2023-12-18
Published in Print: 2024-11-26

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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