The Syntax of Norwegian Passive Constructions

The Syntax of Norwegian Passive Constructions
Author: Tor A. Åfarlí
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 191
Release: 1992-11-06
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027282447

This book provides an analysis of the passive phenomenon in general and of Norwegian passive constructions in particular. Related topics such as English passive constructions and Norwegian ergative constructions are also examined. The analysis is carried out within a Government and Binding framework. Chapter 1 contains a very brief introduction to GB syntax and a description of the passive phenomenon and its manifestation in Norwegian. The “orthodox analysis” of the passive as proposed in Chomsky's Lectures on Government and Binding is contrasted with the “new analysis”, which claims that “the passive morpheme” is an argument of the verb. The book sets out to show that a version of this “new analysis” successfully explains the basic properties of Norwegian passives. Chapters 2 and 3 examine properties of Norwegian passives, notably properties related to Theta-role assignment and Case assignment. Chapter 4 compares the Norwegian with the English passive and proposes a unified analysis of the two. Chapter 5 discusses various cases of passivization failure in Norwegian , while Chapter 6 focuses on the scope of movement in passive and ergative constructions in Norwegian and proposes a syntactic level “beneath” D-structure.

The Syntax of Norwegian Passive Constructions

The Syntax of Norwegian Passive Constructions
Author: Tor A. Åfarli
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 190
Release: 1992-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027227276

This book provides an analysis of the passive phenomenon in general and of Norwegian passive constructions in particular. Related topics such as English passive constructions and Norwegian ergative constructions are also examined. The analysis is carried out within a Government and Binding framework. Chapter 1 contains a very brief introduction to GB syntax and a description of the passive phenomenon and its manifestation in Norwegian. The "orthodox analysis" of the passive as proposed in Chomsky's Lectures on Government and Binding is contrasted with the "new analysis," which claims that "the passive morpheme" is an argument of the verb. The book sets out to show that a version of this "new analysis" successfully explains the basic properties of Norwegian passives. Chapters 2 and 3 examine properties of Norwegian passives, notably properties related to Theta-role assignment and Case assignment. Chapter 4 compares the Norwegian with the English passive and proposes a unified analysis of the two. Chapter 5 discusses various cases of passivization failure in Norwegian, while Chapter 6 focuses on the scope of movement in passive and ergative constructions in Norwegian and proposes a syntactic level "beneath" D-structure.

Passives and Middles in Mainland Scandinavian

Passives and Middles in Mainland Scandinavian
Author: Antonio Fábregas
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2020-03-23
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110670933

This monograph explores the properties of passive and middle voice constructions in Norwegian and Swedish, concentrating on the linguistic variation related to these two constructions in Mainland Scandinavian. At an empirical level, we provide a detailed discussion of the morphosyntax and semantics of the two main types of passives in both languages, lexical (s-) and periphrasitic (bli-) passives. At a theoretical level, we propose an architecture of the language faculty where exponents play a central role. Exponents are selected to identify the structures generated by the grammar and provide a platform that make these units interpretable by the sensori-motor and conceptual-intentional interfaces. Exponents this play an essential role in determining the well-formedness of linguistic structures. We demonstrate how different syntactic structures identified and lexicalized by exponents in these two languages are capable of capturing the microvariation observed in the voice systems of these two languages in a straightforward way. The amount of linguistic information (i.e., aspect and mood) identified by each exponent in each language determines the types of complements and specifiers that can be integrated into and lexicalized by a given exponent. Although our approach shares certain affinities with other neo-constructionist approaches, a novel proposal we advance in this book is that exponents are housed in an intermediate level of structure that exists between the narrow syntax and its external interfaces. This exponency-level (Ʃ-structure) allows for a more parsimonious theoretical analysis that does not sacrifice descriptive adequacy.

Syntactic and FSP Aspects of the Existential Construction in Norwegian

Syntactic and FSP Aspects of the Existential Construction in Norwegian
Author: Dubec, Pavel
Publisher: Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press
Total Pages: 138
Release: 2019-04-01
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 8024642824

The book discusses the information structure approach as introduced by the Prague linguistic circle and elaborated, in the first place, by Jan Firbas, one of the key persons in the field of functional sentence perspective (FSP), and further by Aleš Svoboda, Libuše Dušková or Martin Adam. It explores the Norwegian existential construction from the syntactic and FSP points of view but also discusses selected FSP aspects in general. The theory of functional sentence perspective has been attested to multiple languages such as Czech, English, German, Russian, French, Italian or Spanish. This book attempts, among other things, to attest its applicability to Norwegian, and thus demonstrate its universal nature, at least in the field of Indo-European languages.

Norwegian Modals

Norwegian Modals
Author: Kristin M. Eide
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2005
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9783110179965

Norwegian Modals is a detailed description of the syntactic and semantic properties of modals in Norwegian. Modal verbs in Mainland Scandinavian languages have received much less attention than their English and German counterparts, hence this book seizes the opportunity to present a range of new data and generalizations relevant for the study of Scandinavian languages, but also for the study of modality in Germanic and other languages. The book critically evaluates a range of proposals from the modality literature, focusing on the Theta-properties and the scopal properties of Modals in Germanic languages, and concludes that none of these previous proposals are able to account for the syntax of modals in Norwegian. The Theta-properties of modals are shown to depend on the construction in which the modal occurs, hence neither a raising analysis, a control analysis, nor a raising-versus-control analysis in fact suffices to exhaust these properties of Norwegian modals. The interplay of modals with tense and aspect is likewise thoroughly investigated, presenting a range of data revealing that existing universalist proposals are insufficient to account for even quite regular patterns. Instead, a new analysis is presented, building on a new compositional tense system which exploits aspectual features of predicates and selectional preferences of modal classes.