Introduction 3.4.1
The data in this section are excerpted from the literature, and particularly from the dialectological literature. Most of this literature is relatively old, and the data from these works represent the traditional dialects of North Germanic. The present-day varieties are represented by the data from the NSD-database, which contains relevant data from Norway, Sweden and Finland. The data from the traditional dialects are unevenly spread across the Mainland Scandinavian area, due to the sparse number of studies on dialect syntax. In addition to the works that explicitly comment on syntactic issues, I have excerpted examples from dialectological works that concern other linguistic
fields such as phonology and morphology. This exceprtion has resulted in a relatively large amount of data from Norway, and less from the other countries.
The section is organised as follows. In 3.4.2 I consider Norwegian dialects. First, I give a survey of the traditional pattern, and then the patterns found in the modern varieties are shown. In 3.4.3, Swedish varieties are discussed. Here too, I consider the traditional dialects first and then the modern dialects. Danish dialects, two in particular, are considered in 3.4.4, and I give an overview of the patterns in Faroese and Icelandic in 3.4.6. I compare and discuss the results in section 3.4.7.
Norwegian 3.4.2
The traditional dialects 3.4.2.1
The available data for traditional Norwegian dialects show that the dialects either exhibit Pronoun Shift, or do not have Pronoun Shift across negation. Some of the studies, however, contain descriptions of both word orders.
As Venås (1971) notes, Pronoun Shift is a part of the systems in the dialects of Southern Norway, except for the dialects in an area of the north-western parts of Southern Norway and in southern parts of Trøndelag (Central Norway). Venås does not have much information about dialects in Northern Norwegian.
A few examples of Pronoun Shift, in particular SS, for some Northern Norwegian and South-Eastern dialects are given in (32) (examples (32a,d,e) are taken from Jahr and Skare 1996: 66, 38, 44;
examples (32b,c) are taken from Iversen 1918: 82f.; examples (32f,g,h) are taken from Beito 1973:
11, 16):
(32) a. Ser dåkker ikke att æ blingke (Vadsø, No.)32 see you not that I wink
‘Cann’t you see that I am winking’
b. Kjæm ikkje doktern? (Tromsø, No.)
comes not doctor.DEF
‘Isn’t the doctor coming?’
c. Kjæm han ikkje? (Tromsø, No.)
comes he not
‘Is he not coming?’
32 The dialects of, for example, Finnmark county have been poorly studied. The following quotation from Larsen (1948 *1897+: 46f) illustrates this explicitely: “*…+ stiftet har tre dialektgrupper, Helgelands, Salten og Lofoten og Tromsø amts (bortseet fra Bardo og Målselven), sammen med hvilken også det norske talesprog i Finnmarken må regnes, hvilket dog på grund af indflytning og omflytning ikke har udviklet sådanne
særegenheder, at denne dialect har nogen synderlig betydning.” (‘The county has three dialect groups, the one of Helgeland, the one of Salten, and the one of Lofoten and Tromsø (except Bardu and Målselv), with which also the Norwegian spoken language of Finnmark should be grouped, which, because of immigration and migration, has not developed such characteristics, so that this dialect does not have any particular interest.’ (My translation.)
d. Men vesst e ikj hu’s my’kj feil. (Sørfold, No.) but if I not remember much wrong
‘But if I don’t remember wrongly’
e. Mæn hanjn såg ho ikkje før hanjn va mett på Äsjtfjorn. (Alstahaug, No.) but he saw her not until he was mid on Äsjt.fiord.DEF
‘But he didn’t see her until he was in the middle of the fiord.’
f. Tre sjier, de tåtte – (et)te jænta var no å kjinne. (Eidsberg, No.) three spoons that thought not girl.DEF was something to churn
‘Three spoons, the girl didn’t think that was much to churn.’
g. Dær fekk døm ette mjølka kuene, fer da bynte levene (Follo, No.) there got they not milked cows.DEF because then started noise.DEF
‘They didn’t get to milk the cows there, because then the noise started.’
h. Prest å kjørke, de ville-n ette veta no tå i alminlihet priest and church that would-he not know something of in general
‘Priest and church, that wouldn’t he have something to do with in general.’ (Follo, No.) (32a) is a y/n-question and the subject precedes negation in this example from the Vadsø dialect.
(32b,c) show SS in y/n-questions in the Tromsø dialect. In (32b) negation precedes a DP subject, whereas negation follows a pronominal one in (32c). Examples of SS across negation in the Northern Norwegian dialects of Sørfold and Alstahaug are given in (32d,e). (32f) examplifies the word order vfin > neg > DP subj in a dialect from South-Eastern Norway, and (32g,h) show that pronominal subjects precede negation in another dialect from South-Eastern Norway.
Examples without Pronoun Shift across negation are given in (33). Especially the dialects of North-Western Norway (in Southern Norway) (Heggstad 1920; Venås 1971; Fitje 1995) have been known for a long time (at least since Ivar Aasen) to not have Pronoun Shift across negation. Other dialects that are also known to exhibit this word order are the (traditional) dialect of Oppdal in Trøndelag (Haugen 1982) and the traditional Bergen dialect (Larsen and Stoltz 1912) (example (33a) is taken from Haugen 1982: 155; example (33b) is taken from Hårstad 2004: 35; example (33c) is taken from Larsen & Stoltz 1912: 148; examples (33d,e) are taken from Heggstad 1920: 93):
(33) a. Da ha itj e sakt ta dær (Oppdal, No.) that have not I said that there
‘I haven’t said that’
b. Æ såg itj ho (Oppdal, No.)
I saw not her
‘I didn’t see her’
c. ska’kje vi skrive mer (Bergen, No.)
shall.not we write more
‘Are we not going to write any more?’
d. De ha kje eg haurt før (Nordfjord, No.)
that have not I heard before
‘I haven’t heard that before’
e. Vi brydde ikkje oss om ditta (Nordfjord, No.) we cared not REFL about this
‘We didn’t care about this’
The examples (33a,b) are taken from the Oppdal dialect. (33a) shows that there is no SS, and (33b) shows no OS. Observe also that the negative marker in this dialect has the form itj. The Bergen dialect is exemplified in (33c), and in this y/n-question the negative marker precedes the pronominal subject. (33d,e) are taken from the dialects of Nordfjord. In (33d) negation precedes a pronominal subject, and in (33e) negation precedes a pronominal object.33 Observe that in the examples from the Nordfjord dialects, both the full form ikkje and the short form kje precede the pronoun. The Nordfjord and the Bergen dialects are studied in more detail in chapter 5. According to Venås (1971), only negation, not adverbs, may precede pronouns in these dialects. This issue too, is touched upon in chapter 5.
The traditional dialect of Stavanger apparently exhibits both patterns. Consider the following examples from the Stavanger dialect (examples from Svendsen 1931: 136, 133, 134, respectively):
(34) a. Darrfårr kan eg ikkje kåmma (Stavanger, No.)
therefore can I not come
‘Therefore, I cannot come’
b. Han har våre svere te drikka, elles hadde kje eg fått an (Stavanger, No.) he has been big to drink else had not I got him
‘He has been drinking a lot, otherwise I wouldn’t have got him’
c. Eg kjende kje han, han kje meg (Stavanger, No.) I knew not him he not me
‘I didn’t know him, he didn’t know me’
In (34a) the pronoun precedes the full form negative marker ikkje, but in (34b,c) the subject and object pronouns, respectively, follow the short form kje. In these examples the forms ikkje and kje have complementary distribution, so that there is Pronoun Shift across ikkje, but not across kje.
Map 4 summarises the observations from the dialectological literature on Norwegian. Only places with concrete information about the relative order of negation and pronominal arguments are indicated. The isogloss in North-Western Norway is drawn based on the information in Venås (1971), and the traditional dialects in this area has no Pronoun Shift across negation. Places that are not indicated, exhibit by hypothesis the unmarked word order vfin > pron > neg.
In the next section we turn to the present-day dialects and the judgement data on Pronoun Shift from the NSD-database.
33 These facts concerning this dialect area were already noted by Ivar Aasen (2000 [1850]).
Map 4: The relative order of neg and pronouns in traditional Norwegian dialects
circular marker, red/dark: the word order vfin > pron > neg is common circular marker, yellow/light: the word order vfin > neg > pron may appear
blue marker + inside the border: the word order vfin > neg > pron is common (cf. Venås 1971) The modern dialects
3.4.2.2
The following sentences with ±Pronoun Shift across negation are stored in the NSD-database and were tested in the NorDiaSyn project. The sentences all have a pronominal cluster with the subject and the object, but vary with respect to the position of the negative marker.
(35) a. Derfor leste ikke han a. (No.)
therefore read not he her
b. Derfor leste han ikke a. (No.)
therefore read he not her
c. Derfor leste han a ikke. (No.)
therefore read he her not
‘Therefore, he didn’t read it’
The results are shown in the maps 5-7, respectively. Recall the discussion in chapter 2 on these particular sentences, which concluded that these results must be handled with care.
Map 5: The results for (35a) Derfor leste ikke han a (NSD)
White marker: high score (4-5); grey marker: medium score (3); black marker: low score (1-2)
This sentence (35a) was taken into the NorDiaSyn questionnaire after the collection had started, and therefore there are no results from the locations that were visited early in the collection period. As a consequence, there are few results from the region Sogn and Fjordane, in which, according to the literature, the dialects have the word order vfin > neg > subjpron in main clauses with inverted subjects. Observe that this word order is accepted in some places in Trøndelag and Finnmark. In the Stavanger dialect, this clause is accepted by one of the older informants, but both the young informants reject it, (cf. example (34) above).34
Maps 6 and 7 below show that structures in which the subject precedes negation, are more readily accepted.
34The scores from Stavanger may indicate that no Pronoun Shift existed in old Stavanger varieties, but not in young ones (or, perhaps, that Svendsen 1931 was wrong in his description).
Map 6: The results for (35b) Derfor leste han ikke a (NSD)
White marker: high score (4-5); grey marker: medium score (3); black marker: low score (1-2)
Map 6 shows that the word order vfin > neg > objpron is more or less accepted from Trøndelag and northwards, but also in many places in Southern parts of Norway, including a part of the North-Western Norwegian area, which is known to have the order vfin > neg > pron (cf. Map 4).
Black markers, which mark unacceptability, are accumulated in three distinct places, in South-Eastern Norway, South-Western Norway and in northern parts of North-Western Norway (cf. Map 4). One possible explanation for (a part of) the low scores in these areas, may be that some of the varieties spoken in these regions have distinct clitic pronouns, which by hypothesis makes it easier to judge the sentences as containing unstressed pronouns: At least some of the South-Eastern Norwegian dialects have such pronouns, as indicated in (35), and so has the Stavanger, too.
Northern Norwegian dialects, on the other hand, lack such pronominal forms.
When we compare Map 4 and 6, we see that dialects that allow the word order vfin > neg > subj, also allow vfin > neg > obj. Furthermore, the results show that non-OS is judged more acceptable
than non-SS. This is interesting from a theoretical point of view, and it can be interpreted in support of a designated pronominal subject position that is more accessible than the special pronominal object position.
Finally, Map 7 shows the judgements for the sentence with Pronoun Shift.
Map 7: The results for Derfor leste han a ikke (NSD)
White marker: high score (4-5); grey marker: medium score (3); black marker: low score (1-2)
The word order in (35a) is accepted in more or less all dialects, except for a few in Trøndelag.
Interestingly, it is accepted also in the region Sogn, in which, according to the literature, speakers prefer the order vfin > neg > pron.
Thus, according to the results from the NSD-database, the order vfin > neg > pron and in particular the order vfin > neg > objpron is more widespread than suggested in the literature.
The results given in Maps 5-7 are not immediately corroborated by production data provided by the NDC-corpus (Johannessen et al. 2009). In chapter 5 the dialects of Senja, Trøndelag, Bergen and Stryn are studied in detail, and this investigation shows that OS is ‘obligatory’ in the dialect grammar of Senja, contrary to the result shown in Map 5. It also shows that the dialect of Bergen allows negation to precede a subject, contrary to what is shown in Map 4. Finally, the investigation
undertaken in chapter 5 also shows that the Trøndelag dialects allow Pronoun Shift, contrary to the results shown in Map 6.
With regard to Southern Norwegian, the Stavanger dialect and the Finnmark dialect, results from searches in the NDC-corpus are shown in Table 12. The search strings are indicated in the table.
When both the negative marker ikke and pronoun are mentioned, this is, due to lack of space, meant to indicate that I have searched for the strings “ikke – pronoun” and “pronoun – ikke”. The total number of instances for the searches are also included. In the columns for the orders with objects, the number before the ‘/’ indicates the total number of instances with objects, whereas the number behind the ‘/’ indicates the number of occurrences of the pronoun det (‘it’) (cf. the discussion in section 3.3.3). The frequencies for the relative order of subject and negation are also given in percentages.
Table 12: Occurrences of ±Pronoun Shift in V1 and V2 clauses in Norwegian dialects (NDC) Dialect
The occurrences with pronominal objects (except for det ‘it’) are relatively few, but observe that the reflexive, which is almost always unstressed, appears in front of negation (cf. the discussion in chapter 2). Furthermore, all the three dialect groups show SS, but the frequencies vary. For the dialects of Southern Norway, it seems safe to conclude that Pronoun Shift is a part of the dialect grammars.
In the Finnmark dialects, the frequency for the order vfin > neg > subjpron is almost doubled with respect to the average frequency for Southern Norwegian: The figures indicate that this word order is more common in (some of) the Finnmark dialects than in Southern Norwegian dialects, and this is also my impression after listening to all the recordings from Northern Norway.39 The difference
35 Finnmark: Hammerfest, Lakselv, Tana, Vardø, Kautokeino, Kirkenes, Kjøllefjord
36 Flå (70 instances), Alvdal (98 instances), Kristiansand (124 instances), Landvik (200 instances), Lyngdal (134 instances), Nissedal (159 instances), Tinn (98 instances), Vang (117 instances).
37 One of these instances is the reciprocal hverandre (’each other’).
38 In the search for “ikke – pron” a third field was unawares included, so that this search in reality included only instances of this string where the pronoun was followed by an item of any kind.
39 In connection with work on the project http://nordnorsk.uit.no
between (some of) the Finnmark dialects and dialects in Troms and Nordland with respect to the frequency of the order vfin > neg > unstressed pron is striking.
Data from Stavanger is included based on the statements in Svendsen (1931). The figures show that an inverted pronominal subject is more likely to appear after negation in the Stavanger dialect than in other dialects in Southern Norway, but the number of occurrences are too low for me to be conclusive in this matter.
To summarise, according to Map 4 the word order order vfin > neg > subjpron is more acceptable in the Finnmark and the Trøndelag dialects than in dialects in Southern Norway – this is corroborated by production data, although the opposite word order is far more frequent in the Finnmark dialect.
Map 5 shows that having no OS is accepted in more or less all dialects from Sogn and Dovre and northwards. Except for the dialects of Sogn and Trøndelag, this non-OS word order is not corroborated by production data. Note, however, that the figures for pronominal objects are small compared to the ones for pronominal subjects, but the position of the reflexive gives strong indications for the preferred position for unstressed pronominal objects.
On some Swedish dialects 3.4.3
Traditional Swedish varieties 3.4.3.1
As for the traditional Swedish varieties, I have only been able to collect information about the Northern Swedish dialect(s) of Norrland county, and Övdalian (the dialect of Älvdalen in central parts of Sweden (Dalarna county)).
According to the survey in Endresen (1988), Northern Swedish patterns on a par with the Trøndelag dialects. Thus, having no Pronoun Shift is possible in certain contexts. This is exemplified in (36), which show that SS across negation is optional and depends on the phonological contexts (example (36a,c) from Bucht 1962: 66; example (36b) from Dahlstedt and Ågren 1954: 279):
(36) a. ska-nt-u jöra de? (Härnösand, Sw.)
shall-not-you. do it
‘Won’t you do it?’
b. Ha-nt du hôrt tal? (Norrland, Sw.)
have-not you heard spoken
‘Haven’t you heard it?’
c. förbanningen kom’en int och fråga, hvad jag hete, nu (Härnösand, Sw.) damn came.he not and asked what I call now
‘Damn it, didn’t he come and asked what my name was!’
In (36a,b) the utterances are y/n-questions, which also may have a preference for no SS (cf. section 3.3.2.3). Observe that the negative marker is cliticised to the verb in these cases. In the declarative/exclamative (36c), there is SS of the reduced masculine form across the full form negative marker int. The reason for this may be that int does not cliticise to verbs having a final consonant as in kom (‘come’) (Bucht 1962), hence, cliticisation seems to be restricted by phonology.
The traditional spoken variety in Älvdalen, Classical Övdalian, is a variety that explicitly does not have OS (e.g. Levander 1909: 121). Levander does not mention the relative position of negation and
pronominal subjects in declarative clauses, which, I think, indicates that the variety follows the standard pattern in that respect (the examples (37a,b) are taken from Levander 1909: 124, 123, respectively).
(37) a. An sóg int mig (Classical Övdalian, Sw.)
he saw not me
‘He didn’t see me’
b. ig wet so fel eð so (Classical Övdalian, Sw.)
I know so mod.prt. that so
‘I know that, you know’
Levander (and also Garbacz 2009) provides mostly examples involving the negative marker, cf. (37a).
However, in (37b) the adverbial so fel (‘so mod.prt.’) precedes the object pronoun det (‘it’). This variety will be examined more closely in chapter 5.
Also Finland-Swedish dialects seem to have a preference for the order vfin > subjpron > neg. I have not found any examples of adjacent adverbs and objects in the literature on these dialects, so I do not have any information on this issue.
Consider the following examples from the Närpes (example from Ivars 1988: 156, 169) and Nyland dialects (Lundström 1939: 153):
(38) a. Bru:ka ni itt springg åm voå:ran åp i:sfla:tjen å tå i:sin use you not run in spring.DEF up ice.floe.DEF and when ice.DEF
rie:kt? (Närpes, Fi.)
breaks
‘Did you not use to run in the spring on the ice floe and when the ice breaks?’
b. Tå vi vekst opp va itt vi na ythu boå;n sjäralls itt. (Närpes, Fi.) when we grew up were not we any out.in boat.DEF absolutely not
‘When we grew up, we didn’t go out in boat, not at all.’
c. När an int for foder, so for an int spillning (Nyland, Fi.) when he not gets food then gets he not stool
‘when he doesn’t get food, then he doesn’t get stool’
The examples in (38a,b) are taken from the Närpes dialect, and in (38a) the subject precedes negation, and in (38b) negation precedes the subject. The subject in (38b), however, may be analysed as being focalised, in which case the given word order is expected. In (38c) the subject precedes negation. Also the dialect of Northern Ostrobothnia will be considered in greater detail in chapter 5.
Modern Swedish dialects 3.4.3.2
The NSD-database (Lindstad et al. 2009) gives an indication of the patterns in the modern Swedish varieties. The tested sentences used in Swedien are the same as the test sentences used in Norway, see (35), and are repeated here for convenience:
(39) a. Därför leste inte han den (Sw.) therefore read not he it
b. Därför leste han inte den. (Sw.)
therefore read he not it
c. Därför leste han den inte. (Sw.)
therefore read he it not
‘Therefore, he didn’t read it’
The results are given in Maps 8-10 below. The scores for the sentence in (39a) are so to speak evenly portioned between high, medium and low scores (cf. Map 8), whereas the sentences in (39b,c) are both accepted in almost all of the Swedish dialects (cf. Map 9 and Map 10). In the Finland-Swedish area, (39a,b), but not (39c), are accepted by the speakers of Ostrobothnia. In the two southern
The results are given in Maps 8-10 below. The scores for the sentence in (39a) are so to speak evenly portioned between high, medium and low scores (cf. Map 8), whereas the sentences in (39b,c) are both accepted in almost all of the Swedish dialects (cf. Map 9 and Map 10). In the Finland-Swedish area, (39a,b), but not (39c), are accepted by the speakers of Ostrobothnia. In the two southern