Activities per year
Abstract
The Danish case system changed profoundly throughout the Middle Danish era. Based on examples from mainly three texts written in East Danish (Scanian dialect), I describe the steps of and stages in these changes and claim that they were caused neither by an unstressed-vowel-neutralising sound law nor by language contact as often assumed, but by various interrelated processes of grammaticalisation. I focus on one of these processes, viz., that the fixed topology of the Middle Danish noun phrase simply made noun-phrase internal agreement by means of case marking redundant and caused the loss of the indexical relations signalling this agreement, which, in turn, contributed to the gradual phase-out of case marking. Moreover, I relate this phase-out to two general linguistic principles, viz. those of markedness agreement (Andersen 2001: 27–37) and single encoding (Norde 2001: 258–261). Finally, based on Nørgård-Sørensen & al. (2011: 5–6) and Nørgård-Sørensen & Heltoft’s (2015: 262–263) five criteria for what constitutes a grammatical paradigm, I also demonstrate that, irrespective of the existence of some level of free variation, the Middle Danish case system may be described paradigmatically and, correspondingly, that the changes it undergoes constitutes an instance of paradigmatic and thus grammatical change.
Translated title of the contribution | Redundant indeksikalitet og paradigmatisk omorganisering i det gammeldanske kasussystem |
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Original language | English |
Title of host publication | Paradigms regained : Theoretical and empirical arguments for the reassessment of the notion of paradigm |
Editors | Gabriele Diewald, Katja Politt |
Place of Publication | Berlin |
Publisher | Language Science Press |
Publication date | 2022 |
Pages | 173-200 |
ISBN (Print) | 978-3-96110-326-3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2022 |
Series | Empirically Oriented Theoretical Morphology and Syntax |
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ISSN | 2366-3529 |
Keywords
- Faculty of Humanities
- Middle Danish
- case
- topology
- indexicality
- grammaticalisation
- paradigm
- agreement
Activities
- 1 Lecture and oral contribution
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Redundant indexicality and paradigmatic reorganisations in the Middle Danish case system
Bjarne Simmelkjær Sandgaard Hansen (Other)
23 Aug 2019Activity: Talk or presentation types › Lecture and oral contribution