Abstract
This paper presents a case study in intraparadigmatic variation. It begins with a fine-grained morphological decomposition of the reinforced demonstrative pronoun in Old Norse. Five distinct morphemes are identified, and it is shown that there are three patterns into which these morphemes can be assembled within the paradigm. Applying Cinque’s (2005) U20 theory of movement, it is then shown that the three different structures observed in the reinforced demonstrative paradigm are derived from a single functional sequence of four syntactic heads. Interestingly, a morphological reflex of the cyclic/roll-up divide is identified in the process. Finally, an account is provided for why only these three structures appear in the paradigm in the first place. Overall the paper argues that Cinque’s (2005) theory of syntactic movement can be applied also at the morphological level and ultimately that syntax and morphology are governed by the same principles.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Liliane Haegeman and Michal Starke for invaluable discussion, guidance, and comments. Thanks also to Sverre Stausland Johnsen and Katrín Axelsdóttir for discussion of the data, and to GIST for useful feedback on previous versions of this talk (April 2 and 12, 2013; March 26, 2014). Thanks also to Bronwyn Bjorklund, Anne Breitbarth, Jeroen van Craenenbroeck, Marcel Den Dikken, Thomas McFadden, Maria Polinksy, and Coppe van Urk for their questions and comments at GLOW 37 in Brussels, as well as two anonymous reviewers for The Linguistic Review. My research is supported by BOF grant 01D30311 (UGent).
References
Adams, J. N. 2013. Social variation and the Latin language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511843433Search in Google Scholar
Axelsdóttir, Katrín. 2003. Saga ábendingarfornafnsins sjá [The history of the demonstrative pronoun sjá]. Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði 25(1). 41–77. http://timarit.is/view_page_init.jsp?pageId=5414324&requestedFileType=Web%20display&pdfView=FitH&lang=en (accessed 7 March 2013).Search in Google Scholar
Barnes, Michael. 2004 [1999]. A new introduction to Old Norse, part I: Grammar. Exeter: Viking Society for Northern Research, University College London.Search in Google Scholar
Bernstein, Judy. 1997. Demonstratives and reinforcers in Romance and Germanic languages. Lingua 102. 87–113.10.1016/S0024-3841(96)00046-0Search in Google Scholar
Caha, Pavel. 2009. The nanosyntax of case. Tromsø, Norway: University of Tromsø dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Campbell, Alistair. 2003 [1959]. Old English grammar. New York: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo. 2005. Deriving Greenberg’s Universal 20 and its exceptions. Linguistic Inquiry 36(3). 315–332.10.1162/0024389054396917Search in Google Scholar
Craigie, William, James Murray & John Simpson (eds.). 1971. The compact edition of the Oxford English Dictionary: Volume II, P-Z (= OED II). Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
D’Hulst, Yves. 2006. Romance plurals. Lingua 116. 1303–1329.10.1016/j.lingua.2005.09.003Search in Google Scholar
Faarlund, Jan Terje. 2004. The syntax of Old Norse: With a survey of the inflectional morphology and a complete bibliography. New York: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Gibson, Courtenay St. John & Catherine O. Ringen. 2000. Icelandic umlaut in optimality theory. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 23(1). 49–64.10.1080/033258600750045778Search in Google Scholar
Gordon, E. V. 1956 [1927]. An introduction to Old Norse. A. R. Taylor (ed.), 2nd edn. New York: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph. 1963. Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. In Joseph Greenberg (ed.), Universals of language, 73–113. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Halle, Morris & Alec Marantz. 1993. Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. In Kenneth Hale & Jay Keyser (eds.), The view from building 20, 111–176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Haugen, Einar. 1976. The Scandinavian languages: An introduction to their history. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Haugen, Einar. 1982. Scandinavian language structures. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Search in Google Scholar
Jayaseelan, K. A. 2010. On two types of movement. In Gao Ming-le (ed.), Proceedings of GLOW in Asia VIII 2010: Universals and variation, 28–34. Beijing: Beijing Language and Culture University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Johnsen, Sverre Stausland. 2012. Syncope of long *ī in Old Norse nouns. In John Ole Askedal, Tom Schmidt & Rolf Theil (eds.), Germansk filologi og norske ord: Festskrift til Harald Bjorvand, 33–51. Oslo: Novus forlag.Search in Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard. 1994. The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard. 2005. Movement and silence. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195179163.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Klingenschmitt, Gert. 1987. Erbe und Neuerung beim germanischen Demonstrativpronomen. In Herbert Kolb, Klaus Matzel & Karl Stackmann; Rolf Bergmann, Heinrich Tiefenbach & Lothar Voetz (eds.), Althochdeutsch I: Grammatik. Glossen und Texte, 169–189. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag.Search in Google Scholar
Krahe, Hans. 1969. Germanische Sprachwissenschaft, Band II: Formenlehre. Wolfgang Meid (ed.), 7th edn. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar
Lander, Eric. 2013. Gothic and the Northwest Germanic reinforced demonstrative. Paper presented at the 25th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, University of Iceland, May 13–15.Search in Google Scholar
Lander, Eric. In prep. The nanosyntax of the Northwest Germanic reinforced demonstrative. Ghent, Belgium: Ghent University dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Leu, Thomas. 2015. The architecture of determiners. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199945238.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Lloyd, Albert Larry, Otto Springer & Rosemarie Lühr (eds.). 1998. Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen: Band II, bî-ezzo (= EWAhd II). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.Search in Google Scholar
McFadden, Thomas. 2004. On the pronominal inflection of the Germanic strong adjective. U. Penn working papers in linguistics 10(1). 123–136. Also published in Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft 63 (2003) [2009]. 53–82.Search in Google Scholar
Nielsen, Hans Frede. 2000. The Early Runic language of Scandinavia. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag.Search in Google Scholar
Noreen, Adolf. 1923 [1884]. Altnordische Grammatik 1: Altisländische und altnorwegische grammatik, unter Berücksichtigung des Urnordischen, 4th edn. Halle (Saale): Max Niemeyer.Search in Google Scholar
Pantcheva, Marina. 2011. Decomposing path: The nanosyntax of directional expressions. Tromsø, Norway: University of Tromsø Dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Prokosch, Eduard. 1939. A comparative Germanic grammar. Philadelphia: Linguistic Society of America.Search in Google Scholar
Ringe, Don & Ann Taylor. 2014. A linguistic history of English: Vol. II, The development of Old English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199207848.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Robinson, Orrin W. 1992. Old English and its closest relatives: A survey of the earliest Germanic languages. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Samnordisk runtextdatabas. www.nordiska.uu.se/forskn/samnord.htm (accessed 13 February 2013). Uppsala University.Search in Google Scholar
Sandøy, Helge. 1994. The nature of “overlong syllables” in the Scandinavian languages. In Wolfgang U. Dressler, Martin Prinzhorn & John R. Rennison (eds.), Phonologica: Proceedings of the 7th International Phonology Meeting 1992, 233–242. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier.Search in Google Scholar
Starke, Michal. 2009. Nanosyntax: A short primer to a new approach to language. Nordlyd, Tromsø University working papers on language and linguistics 36. [Special issue on Nanosyntax]. 1–6. http://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/nordlyd/ (accessed 12 March 2012).Search in Google Scholar
Starke, Michal. 2011a. Towards an elegant solution to language variation: Variation reduces to the size of lexically stored trees. LingBuzz/001183 (accessed 12 March 2012).Search in Google Scholar
Starke, Michal. 2011b. Course notes on ‘Nanosyntax’. Ghent University, November 7–10.Search in Google Scholar
Sturtevant, Albert Morey. 1943. Notes on Old Norse phonology. Scandinavian Studies 17(5). 157–166.Search in Google Scholar
©2015 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Glow Issue
- From the Complex NP Constraint to everything: On deep extractions across categories
- The clitic binding restriction revisited: Evidence for antilogophoricity
- The differential representation of number and gender in Spanish
- Does Dutch a-scrambling involve movement? Evidence from antecedent priming
- Intraparadigmatic cyclic and roll-up derivations in the Old Norse reinforced demonstrative
- Mandarin peripheral construals at the syntax-discourse interface
- Animating the narrow syntax
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Glow Issue
- From the Complex NP Constraint to everything: On deep extractions across categories
- The clitic binding restriction revisited: Evidence for antilogophoricity
- The differential representation of number and gender in Spanish
- Does Dutch a-scrambling involve movement? Evidence from antecedent priming
- Intraparadigmatic cyclic and roll-up derivations in the Old Norse reinforced demonstrative
- Mandarin peripheral construals at the syntax-discourse interface
- Animating the narrow syntax