Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-vsgnj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-18T19:59:09.588Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Long passives in Norwegian: Evidence for complex predicates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 November 2014

Helge Lødrup
Helge Lødrup*
Affiliation:
University of Oslo, Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies, Pb 1102, Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, Norway. helge.lodrup@iln.uio.no
Get access

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to show that Norwegian has complex predicates, in which two verbs are reanalyzed as one predicate in a monoclausal structure, comparable to complex predicates that have been proposed for other languages. The central evidence comes from the construction called the long passive, in which the subject of the first verb is typically the patient of the second verb. Norwegian long passives often have passive morphology on both verbs, and I consider this a case of verbal feature agreement. The article also discusses evidence for complex predicates from active sentences.

Keywords

complex predicateslong passivesNorwegian syntaxreanalysisrestructuringverbal feature agreement
Type
Research Article
Information
Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , December 2014 , pp. 367 - 391
Copyright
Copyright © Nordic Association of Linguistics 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alsina, Alex. 1996. The Role of Argument Structure in Grammar: Evidence from Romance. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Andrews, Avery D. & Manning, Christopher D.. 1999. Complex Predicates and Information Spreading in LFG. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan. 1982. The passive in lexical theory. In Bresnan, Joan (ed.), The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations, 3–86. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Butt, Miriam. 1995. The Structure of Complex Predicates in Urdu. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Butt, Miriam, Niño, Maria-Eugenia & Segond, Frederique. 1996. Multilingual processing of auxiliaries in LFG. In Gibbon, Dafydd (ed.), Natural Languages Processing and Speech Technology, 111–122. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. [Reprinted in Sadler & Spencer 2004, 11–22.]CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christensen, Kirsti Koch. 1986. Complex passives, reanalysis, and word formation. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 9 (2), 135–162.Google Scholar
Christensen, Kirsti Koch. 1991. Complex passives reanalysed. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 48, 45–75.Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo. 2006. Restructuring and Functional Heads. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Eide, Kristin Melum. 2011. The ghost of the Old Norse subjunctive: The Norwegian subjunctive participle. Groninger Arbeiten zur germanistischen Linguistik 53 (2), 1–28.Google Scholar
Engdahl, Elisabet. 2006. Semantic and syntactic patterns in Swedish passives. In Lyngfelt, Benjamin & Solstad, Torgrim (eds.), Demoting the Agent, 21–45. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Engh, Jan. 1994. Verb i passiv fulgt av perfektum partisipp: Bruk og historie. Oslo: Novus.Google Scholar
Frank, Anette & Zaenen, Annie. 2004. Tense in LFG: Syntax and morphology. In Sadler & Spencer (eds.), 23–65.Google Scholar
Fukuda, Shin. 2008. Aspectual verbs and the aspect phrase hypothesis. San Diego Linguistic Papers 3. http://escholarship.org/uc/item/9pj2s50f (accessed 11 September 2014).Google Scholar
Grevisse, Maurice & Goosse, André. 2008. Le bon usage: Grammaire française. Paris: De Boeck.Google Scholar
Hellan, Lars. 2001. Complex passive constructions in Norwegian. Ms., University of Trondheim. http://www.meertens.knaw.nl/books/progressingrammar/hellan.pdf (accessed 11 September 2014).Google Scholar
Holmberg, Anders. 2002. Expletives and agreement in Scandinavian passives. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 4 (2), 85–128.Google Scholar
Julien, Marit. 2003. Dobbelsupinum og irreal modus. Norsk Lingvistisk Tidsskrift 21 (2), 135–161.Google Scholar
Julien, Marit & Lødrup, Helge. 2013. Dobbel passiv og beslektede konstruksjoner i skandinavisk. Norsk lingvistisk tidsskrift 31 (2), 221–246.Google Scholar
Kornfilt, Jaklin. 1996. NP-movement and ‘restructuring’. In Freidin, Robert (ed.), Current Issues in Comparative Grammar, 121–147. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Kornfilt, Jaklin. 1999. Das Fernpassiv im Türkischen und im Deutschen. In Johanson, Lars & Rehbein, Jochen (eds.), Türkisch und Deutsch im Vergleich, 153–170. Wiesbaden: Harossowitz.Google Scholar
Laanemets, Anu. 2013. Passiv i moderne dansk, norsk og svensk: Et korpusbaseret studie af tale- og skriftsprog. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Tartu.Google Scholar
Lødrup, Helge. 1991. The Norwegian pseudopassive in lexical theory. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 47, 118–129.Google Scholar
Lødrup, Helge. 1996. The theory of complex predicates and the Norwegian verb få ‘get’. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 57, 76–91.Google Scholar
Lødrup, Helge. 1999. Linking and optimality in the Norwegian presentational focus construction. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 22 (2), 205–229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lødrup, Helge. 2002. The syntactic structures of Norwegian pseudocoordinations. Studia Linguistica 56 (2),121–143.Google Scholar
Lødrup, Helge. 2014. There is no reanalysis in Norwegian pseudocoordinations (except when there is). In Helland, Hans Petter & Salvesen, Christine Meklenborg (eds.), Affaire(s) de grammaire: Mélanges offerts à Marianne Hobæk Haff à l’occasion de ses soixante-cinq ans, 43–65. Oslo: Novus.Google Scholar
Lødrup, Helge. Forthcoming. How can a verb agree with a verb? Reanalysis and pseudocoordination in Norwegian. In Miriam Butt & Tracy Holloway King (eds.), LFG14. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Lundquist, Björn. 2009. Nominalizations and Participles in Swedish. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Tromsø.Google Scholar
Lundquist, Björn. 2013. The role of tense-copying and syncretism in the licensing of morphological passives in the Nordic languages. http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001902.Google Scholar
Müller, Stefan & Ørsnes, Bjarne. 2013. Danish in Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Ms., Institut für Deutsche und Niederländische Philologie, Freie Universitat Berlin. http://hpsg.fu-berlin.de/~stefan/Pub/danish.html (accessed 11 September 2014).Google Scholar
Niño, Maria-Eugenia. 1997. The multiple expression of inflectional information and grammatical architecture. In Corblin, Francis, Godard, Danièle & Marandin, Jean-Marie (eds.), Empirical Issues in Formal Syntax and Semantics, 127–147. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Ørsnes, Bjarne. 2006. Creating raising verbs: An LFG-analysis of the complex passive in Danish. In Butt, Miriam & King, Tracy Holloway (eds.), LFG06, 386–405. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Perlmutter, David M. 1970. The two verbs begin. In Jacobs, Roderick A. & Rosenbaum, Peter S. (eds.), Readings in English Transformational Grammar, 107–119. Waltham, MA: Ginn & Co.Google Scholar
Postal, Paul M. 2004. Skeptical Linguistic Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Reis, Marga & Sternefeld, Wolfgang. 2004. Review article of Susanne Wurmbrand's Infinitives Restructuring and Clause Structure. Linguistics 42 (2), 469–508.Google Scholar
Sadler, Louisa & Spencer, Andrew (eds.). 2004. Projecting Morphology. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Sells, Peter. 2004. Syntactic information and its morphological expression. In Sadler & Spencer (eds.), 187–225.Google Scholar
Sveen, Andreas. 1996. Norwegian Impersonal Actives and the Unaccusative Hypothesis. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Linguistics, University of Oslo.Google Scholar
Taraldsen, Tarald. 1991. A directionality parameter for subject–object linking. In Freidin, Robert (ed.), Principles and Parameters in Comparative Grammar, 219–268. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Whitman, Neal. 2013. Double passives. Ms., The Ohio State University.Google Scholar
Wiklund, Anna-Lena. 2001. Dressing up for vocabulary insertion: The parasitic supine. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 19 (1), 199–228.Google Scholar
Wiklund, Anna-Lena. 2007. The Syntax of Tenselessness. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Wurmbrand, Susanne. 2001. Infinitives: Restructuring and Clause Structure. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Wurmbrand, Susi. 2004. Two types of restructuring: Lexical vs. functional. Lingua 114, 991–1014.Google Scholar
Wurmbrand, Susi. 2013. Complex predicate formation via voice incorporation. http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001968.Google Scholar