Östen Dahl

Tense and aspect in the languages of Europe

This volume puts the European tense-aspect systems in a consistent typological and diachronic perspective. The book advances our understanding of the dynamics of tense and aspect systems, how they develop over time, and how this is reflected in the rich patterns of synchronic variation and their areal distribution

The resilient dative and other remarkable cases in Scandinavian vernaculars

Abstract In this paper we look at the case systems in three Scandinavian vernaculars spoken in Sweden, viz. Elfdalian, Skelleftemål and Vätömål in relation to (i) problems concerning possible case systems and ways in which they can break down; (ii) earlier claims about case hierarchies; (iii) the interaction of case, number and definiteness in nominal paradigms. One type of system considered in the paper is based on the opposition between a default case (nominative/accusative) and a dative – an option excluded by previously suggested generalizations on possible case systems. Our data illustrate several different ways in which one and the same older four-member case system has been reduced, and our conclusion is that a strict hierarchy here cannot be established. The vernaculars studied are also relevant to the question of markedness relations in nominal paradigms: they give additional support to the claim that definite nouns may show more distinctions than indefinite ones, and counter to usual assumptions, singular nouns sometimes show fewer case distinctions than plural nouns, which may be explained by the uniform marking of the dative plural across all paradigms.

Diminutives and Augmentatives

Diminutives and augmentatives, as traditionally understood, are words formed by derivational processes that add a semantic element having to do with size to the meaning of the word, but they tend to involve uses that go far beyond a simple notion of size. Languages vary as to frequency and degree of elaboration of diminutive/augmentative formations, but diminutives are always more frequent and more elaborated than augmentatives. An important conceptual link is between diminutives and affection, plausibly mediated through the relation to children. The pragmatic functions of diminutives are also essential.

From questionnaires to parallel corpora in typology

This rather programmatic paper discusses the use of parallel corpora in the typological study of grammatical categories. In the authors earlier work, tense-aspect categories were studied by means of a translational questionnaire, and cross-linguistic gramtypes were identified through their distribution in the questionnaire. It is proposed that a similar methodology could be applied to multilingual parallel corpora. The possibility of identifying grammatical markers by word-alignment methods is demonstrated with examples from Bible texts.

Rich agreement, everything else being equal and large-scale cross-linguistic comparison

Let us look first at the central notion of “rich verb agreement”, supposed to provide the explanation for the differences between ISc and MSc. Holmberg never gives any clear criteria for what it means for a language to have “rich verb agreement”, but rather “illustrates” it by showing verb paradigms from Modern Icelandic and Standard Swedish. In those paradigms, i.e. the present and past indicative of weak verbs, Icelandic displays nine different verb forms, whereas tense is the only distinction made in Swedish. Holmberg assumes that MSc languages are all like Standard Swedish in this regard (e.g. Section 4.5: “MSc has no overt subject-verb agreement”). However, while this is true of the three standard MSc languages, it does not hold for all spoken varieties of Scandinavian, and it is only recently that it became true of written Swedish. Many traditional dialects in different parts of Sweden distinguish singular and plural forms of verbs, as did the written language until the mid 20th century. Some dialects (Gotland, Halland) have special forms in the 2nd person singular, and some (Dalarna, Halland) have special forms in the 1st person plural. Based on Falk (1993), Holmberg claims that verb agreement “underwent a change in Swedish from an ISc system to a MSc system” about the 16th century. However, the disappearance of the agreement system in Swedish was a gradual affair, at least in the written language. In the paradigms corresponding to those shown by Holmberg, Old Swedish (i.e. the language used before the 16th century) had 7–8 distinct forms (Wessen 1965: 133). In the language of the 1917 Bible translation, there were still five distinct forms (with separate 2nd plurals for both tenses and a separate 1st/3rd present plural). Until about 1945, 3 separate forms were standard. The statement from Holmberg would seem to imply that the crucial change was between 7 and 5 forms, making most modern varieties conform to his picture. AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

Thoughts on language-specific and crosslinguistic entities

Abstract This article discusses questions arising in connection with Martin Haspelmath’s proposal to distinguish between “descriptive categories” at the language-specific level and “comparative concepts” at the crosslinguistic level, where the latter cannot be seen as either crosslinguistic categories or category types (Haspelmath 2010). It is argued that comparative concepts may be better subsumed under the notion of “generalizing concept”, which is not tied to any specific level of analysis, and that the distinction between what is language-specific and what is crosslinguistic is not absolute. Further, it is shown that crosslinguistic pattern clusters as identified in what is here called “bottom-up typology” meshes well with the homeostatic property cluster approach to biological species.

Future Tense and Future Time Reference

Epistemological and perhaps also ontological differences explain asymmetries in the structuring of temporal reference and the blurring of borderlines between future tense, modality, and evidentiality. In the course of grammaticalization, the marking of future time reference may become obligatory. In one and the same language, different future-marking devices often compete with each other. Differences between them reflect their diachronic sources and degrees of grammaticalization. Major parameters in the choice between future-marking devices are the distinction between intention and prediction and distance in time. The distribution of future marking in languages shows some clear areal tendencies.

Grammaticalization in the North

This book looks at some phenomena within the grammar of the noun phrase in a group of traditional North Germanic varieties mainly spoken in Sweden and Finland, usually seen as Swedish dialects, although the differences between them and Standard Swedish are often larger than between the latter and the other standard Mainland Scandinavian languages. In addition to being conservative in many respects – e.g. in preserving nominal cases and subject-verb agreement – these varieties also display many innovative features. These include extended uses of definite articles, incorporation of attributive adjectives, and a variety of possessive constructions. Although considerable attention has been given to these phenomena in earlier literature, this book is the first to put them in the perspective of typology and grammaticalization processes. It also looks for a plausible account of the historical origin of the changes involved, arguing that many of them spread from central Sweden, where they were later reverted due to the influence from prestige varieties coming from southern Scandinavia.

Tense, aspect, mood, and evidentiality, linguistics of

Together tense, aspect, mood, and evidentiality, or TAME for short, play a central role in the grammars of most languages in the world. They are typically marked inflectionally on verbs but can also be expressed by derivational morphology and by periphrastic constructions. Although tense, aspect, and mood, and sometimes also evidentiality are traditionally treated as separate grammatical categories, they are intertwined in TAME systems in ways that make it difficult to uphold such a treatment.

Review of Gregory Stump a Raphael A. Finkel, Morphological Typology: From Word to Paradigm

Gregory Stump & Raphael A. Finkel, Morphological Typology: From Word to Paradigm, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013Gregory Stump & Raphael A. Finkel, Morphological Typology: From Word to Paradigm, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013