The Emergence of Dative Sickness in Early Modern Icelandic

The Emergence of Dative Sickness in Early Modern Icelandic
Jóhanna Barðdal
University of Bergen
Dative Sickness, i.e. the change from accusative to dative subjects, has been explained in the generative
literature as thematic case marking ousting idiosyncratic case marking (cf. Jónsson 2003, Jónsson
and Eythórsson 2005). A major anomaly for this account is the late onset of Dative Sickness, not documented
in Icelandic texts until the latter part of the 19th century. As the prerequisites for Dative
Sickness existed already in Old Norse-Icelandic, the question arises as to why this change did not take
place earlier. I show in the present comparative study of Old Norse-Icelandic and Modern Icelandic
texts that the semantic structure of the Dative Subject Construction has changed from denoting happenstance
and experience-based events equally in Old Norse-Icelandic to a situation where experience-based
events are in majority in Modern Icelandic. This change in language use entails that experience-based
events are now in the spotlight of the Dative Subject Construction, which in turn makes
the construction considerably more coherent semantically in Modern Icelandic, a known precondition
for the productivity of argument structure constructions that are low in type frequency (cf.
Barðdal 2006a, 2008). This change in the semantic structure of the Dative Subject Construction, i.e.
this narrowing and focusing of its semantic scope, is the motivating factor behind the late onset of
Dative Sickness in the history of Icelandic. More generally, this investigation illustrates how productivity
may increase despite a reduction in the type frequency of a construction, contra claims in the
literature that type frequency is the most important factor for productivity (Bybee 1995).
Barðdal, Jóhanna 2006. Predicting the productivity of argument structure constructions. In: The 32nd Annual Meeting of
the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley Linguistics Society, Berkeley. [available at: http://ling.uib.no/barddal/BLS-
32.barddal.pdf]
Barðdal, Jóhanna 2008. Productivity: Evidence from Case and Argument Structure in Icelandic. John Benjamins, Amsterdam.
Bybee, Joan L. 1995. Regular morphology and the lexicon. In: Language and Cognitive Processes 10: 425–455.
Jónsson, Jóhannes Gísli & Þórhallur Eyþórsson 2005. Variation in subject case marking in Insular Scandinavian. Nordic Journal
of Linguistics 28: 223–245.
Jónsson, Jóhannes Gísli 2003. Not so quirky: on subject case in Icelandic. In: Brandner, E. & H. Zinsmeister, H. (eds.). New
Perspectives on Case and Case Theory. Stanford: CSLI Publications, 127–164.

Clause Linking and Information Packaging
Ulrike Demske
Potsdam University
1. In Present-Day German, three types of clause linking may be distinguished: (i) A relation of syntactic
coordination holds between clauses of the same type, while a relation of syntactic subordination
obtains if one clause is syntactically dependent on another clause. Syntactically dependent clauses
may either function as a constituent within a superordinate clause or be only loosely attached to it,
resulting in the further distinction of (ii) integrated vs. (iii) non-integrated subordinate clauses. (1)
illustrates all three types of clause linking in Present-Day German:
(1) a. Nora spielte Geige und Lars ging zum Schwimmen.
’Nora played the violin and Lars went swimming’
b. Als Nora Geige spielte, ging Lars zum Schwimmen.
’When Nora played the violin, Lars went swimming’
c. Lars übte die ganze Nacht auf seiner Tuba, was seine Nachbarn furchtbar ärgerte.
’Lars was practicing the tuba all night, awfully annoying his neighbors’
Regarding information packaging, Brandt (1994) argues that subordinate clauses of type (iii) are used
in Present-Day German to downgrade information units relative to the information units expressed
by the respective main clause.
2. The present talk addresses the question in what respect subordination may be a device of information
packaging in Early New High German (= ENHG, 1350 – 1650), in view of the fact that adverbial
connectives and the final position of the finite verb get reliable markers of subordination not until
the period of ENHG and that adverbial clauses of type (ii) are said to evolve from subordinate patterns
of type (iii) in the course of ENHG as well (König and van der Auwera, 1988). In particular, I will
compare the devices of clause linking in two versions of ›Tristram and Iseult‹ (1170 vs. 1484) using
lexical and syntactic diagnostics, i.e. resumptive pronouns and correlatives as well as the position of
the subordinate clause with respect to the main clause to distinguish between types of clause linking.
Brandt, M. (1994). Subordination und Parenthese als Mittel der Informationsstrukturierung in Texten. Sprache und Pragmatik
32, 1–37.
Cosme, C. (2008). A copus-based perspective on clause linking patterns in English, French and Dutch. In C. Fabricius-Hansen
and W. Ramm (Eds.), ’Subordination’ versus ’Coordination’ in Sentence and Text; A Cross-Linguistic Perspective, Studies
in Language Companion Series 98, pp. 89–114. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
König, E. and J. van der Auwera (1988). Clause integration in German and Dutch conditionals, concessive conditionals, and
concessives. In J. Haiman and S. Thompson (Eds.), Clause Combining in Grammar and Discourse, pp. 101–133. Amsterdam:
Benjamins.

Old Wine in New Bottles: Language Normation and Innovation in the
Work of George Gascoigne (1534-1577)
Roy Eriksen
University of Agder
This paper proposes to consider Gascoigne’s understudied role as a pioneer in English language
policy and for English language change, having worked, as it were, before horizon of expectation. The
need to increase the prestige and efficiency of English as a medium for communication and instruction
is reflected in a number of publications during the reign of Elizabeth I. Translations from Latin,
Italian and French were to secure knowledge and vocabulary transfer into English, but often gave rise
to a macheronic and inefficient style, due to the lack of uniform standards of orthography, resulted in
spelling anarchy.
To liberate the language from Latin and the use of "inkhorn terms" and to favour a greater use of
words of English origin became an aim of grammarians and poets alike. Even though, George
Gascoigne was a spectacular, multitalented innovator in poetry, prose and drama, he was soon overshadowed
by the self-fashioned "new poet" Edmund Spenser, author of The Shepheardes Calender
(1579), but his influence was not negligible. Gascoigne’s Some Notes towards the making of uerse in
English (1572) outlines his key-positions on Englishness and the importation of innovations from
abroad. An examination of his prose and poetry reveals the relation of his practice and theory and
the particular problems entailed.

On the rise of the obligatory subject requirement in Norwegian
Jan Terje Faarlund
University of Oslo
One of the most fundamental changes from Old Norse to the modern Mainland Scandinavian languages
is the introduction of the obligatory subject requirement. While Old Norse allowed subjectless
sentences of various kinds, present-day Mainland Scandinavian requires an overt subject in finite
sentences. During this transition, a grammatical subject was recruited either by a non-subject taking
over the subject role, or by the new expletive filling the subject role. This change is explained as a
result of the loss of the invisible pronoun pro, which in Old Norse could receive nominative case and
function as a subject. The new situation with an obligatory overt subject is due to the loss of pro from
the lexicon, a development which may be explained as the result of less robust input data for new
generations of learners.
Faarlund, Jan Terje 2008. A mentalist interpretation of grammaticalization theory. In: Eythórsson, T. (ed.). Grammatical
Change and Linguistic Theory: The Rosendal Papers. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 221-244.
Holmberg, Anders 2010. Parameters in minimalist theory: The case of Scandinavian. In: Theoretical Linguistics 36: 1-48.
Roberts, Ian 2010. A deletion analysis of null subjects. In: Biberauer, T., A. Holmberg, I. Roberts & M. Sheehan (eds.). Parametric
Variation: Null Subjects in Minimalist Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 58-87.

Jan Kochanowski – the creator of Polish modern literary language
Barbara Gawronska
University of Agder
The standard literary variant of Polish, developed in the XVI century, is in many aspects still normative
in the “cultivate” variant of the written language of today. The documented source of its main
morphological, syntactic, stylistic, and versificatory patterns is the poetry of Jan Kochanowski (1530 –
1584), who is regarded not only as one of the most outstanding Polish writers, but also as the greatest
Slavic poet prior to the 19th century.
His perhaps most important linguistic achievement lies in creating consistent patterns of complex
sentences and complex noun phrases (especially noun phrases containing relative clauses). He also
enriched Polish literature by introducing classic genres (he was the author of the first tragedy written
in Polish - The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys, 1578), incorporating Greek and Roman verse forms into
Polish, and creating nationalized versions of ancient metaphors.
His most known and most emotionally loaded piece of work is Treny (1580; the title has been
translated as Laments or Threnodia) – 19 poems written after the death of his two-and-half year old
daughter Orszula. In those elegies, the feelings of a mourning father are expressed in an ingenious,
creative language, where classic references and metaphors merge with the verse form of traditional
Slavic rural songs.
The main topic of my talk will be Treny, analyzed from a linguistic and translation-theoretical perspective.
Czesław Miłosz, The History of Polish Literature, 2nd edition, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1983, pp. 60-80.
Jan Kochanowski, Laments, translated by Stanisław Barańczak and Seamus Heaney, New York, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux,
1995.
David J. Welsh, Jan Kochanowski, New York, Twayne Publishers, 1974.
The Project Gutenberg EBook of Laments, by Jan Kochanowski (translated by Dorothea Prall)
[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27179/27179-h/27179-h.htm#LAMENT_VII]

The short life of the passive infinitive in tough-constructions
and some of its (late) consequences
Dagmar Haumann
University of Agder
The rise of the passive infinitive in the 14 th century is facilitated mainly by the loss of inflected active
infinitives and the grammaticalization of the preposition to to an infinitive marker. Passive infinitives
start to emerge in tough-constructions as of the end of the 14th century, but have their heyday from
the mid-16 th to the early 18 th century (roughly the Early Modern Period):
(1) a. seeing that the proper English wordes are so harde to be found (1568, PPCEME)
b. and the mouth made narrow, square and easie to be close couered (1615, PPCEME)
c. great ones ar exceeding difficult to be had. (1662/63, PPCEME)
d. Which would be a Thing very easie to be done (1696, LC)
Since their initial occurrence in tough-constructions, passive infinitives coexisted with their active
counterparts. A corpus-based pilot of object gap tough-constructions as in (1) shows that there is an
increase in frequency of both the active and the passive infinitive in the second half of the 17 th century.
As of 1700, the frequency of both active and passive infinitives decreases, but the decrease is
more drastic in active infinitives, with the result that active and passive infinitives are equally frequent
in the first half of the 18 th century. While passive infinitives continue their downward trend
until they ultimately disappear, there is a steep rise in the frequency of active infinitives.
The aim of the paper is twofold: first, to probe into the reasons for and consequences of (a) the relatively
high frequency of the passive infinitive during the Early Modern Period, (b) the steep decrease
in active infinitives in the first half of the 18 th century, and (c) the decline and loss of the passive infinitive
as of the early 18 th century. Second, the paper addresses the question of whether and to
what extent the relatively steep rise of the lesser studied tough-construction in (2) as of the early 19 th
century can be seen as a concomitant of the rise and fall of the passive infinitive:
(2) a. And yet, I do not think I am a very difficult mistress to please (1814, NCF)
b. Eden was a hard school to learn so hard a lesson in (1844, NCF)
c. Mr. Murthwaite was not an easy man to astonish (1868, NCF)
d. The story was a hard one to tell, with all the workmen around her (1875, NCF)
Demske-Neumann, Ulrike 1994. Modales Passiv und Tough Movement. Zur Strukturellen Kausalität eines Syntaktischen
Wandels im Deutschen und Englischen. Tübingen: Niemeyer, chapters 3 & 5.
Fischer, Olga 1991. The rise of the passive infinitive in English. In: Kastovsky, D. (ed.). Historical English Syntax. Berlin: Mouton
de Gruyter, 141-188.
Fischer, Olga, Ans van Kemenade, Willem Koopman & Wim van der Wurff 2000. The Syntax of Early English. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 256-283.
[NCF] Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 1999–2000. Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey.
[PPCEME]Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English. 2004. [http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCEME-
RELEASE-2/index.html]
[LC] The Lampeter Corpus of Early Modern English Tracts. 1998. [http://ota.ox.ac.uk/headers/2400.xml]

Mellomnorsk i tidleg moderne tid?
Gudlaug Nedrelid
University of Agder
Mellomnorsk tid (ca 1350/70 – ca 1523/36) var ein periode med store språkendringar. Perioden har
vore relativt lite utforska (Mørck 2011: 25 f.), i alle fall samanlikna med den føregåande perioden
(norrøn tid). Dette har fyrst og fremst samanheng med kjeldesituasjonen, men det kan ogso i noko
mon ha samanheng med synet på perioden. Han har vorte sedd på som ein nedgangs- og forfallsperiode
i norsk historie og språkhistorie (jf. Imsen 2002, Indrebø 1951), det kan vera ei medverkande
årsak til at han lenge vart lite granska. Det har vore diskusjonar både om kvar grensone for perioden
går, og om det i det heile er ein periode for seg. Magnus Rindal (1988, 1993) har tala for å “avskaffa”
heile perioden, og heller kalla språket for norrønt heilt opp til reformasjonen. Utan å slutta seg eksplisitt
til dette synet, konkluderer Endre Mørck i si store undersøking av mellomnorsk syntaks med at
“leddstillinga i mellomnorske setninger i det store og hele er lik leddstillinga i tilsvarende norrøne
setninger” (2011: 363). Dette innlegget skal presentera og diskutera problem knytte til perioden og
til periodisering.
Imsen, Steinar, 2002: Noregs nedgang. Oslo: Samlaget.
Indrebø, Gustav, 1951: Norsk målsoga. Bergen: John Grieg.
Mørck, Endre, 2011: Leddstillinga i mellomnorske heilsetninger. Funksjons- og feltanalyse og materialpresentasjon. Oslo:
Novus.
Rindal, Magnus, 1988: Finst det ein “mellomnorsk” periode i norsk språkhistorie? I: Eigenproduksjon nr 32, 42–54.
Rindal, Magnus, 1993: Norsk språk 1350-1500. Gammalnorsk eller mellomnorsk? I: E.H. Jahr og O. Lorentz (red): Historisk
språkvitenskap/Historical Lingusitics, 395–404. Oslo: Novus.

Cultures, Contacts and Communication in Scandinavian Cities
in the Late Middle Ages
Gro-Renée Rambø
University of Agder
It is well known that during the Late Middle Ages, the mainland Scandinavian languages, Danish,
Swedish and Norwegian, developed from being basically synthetic languages into being basically
analytic ones. All these Scandinavian languages also implemented a striking amount of new words
(loan words), and in addition they also integrated new structural elements, especially within the
morphological domain. Because the Scandinavian languages changed so profoundly during this period,
it has conceived considerable attention in earlier linguistic research. One of the single most
striking features concerning this historic period in Scandinavia, is the long lasting contact with the
German area as a result of the political and economic dominance represented by the Hanseatic
League. Researchers have ever since the late 19 th century focussed on this language contact period,
trying to explore how different linguistic features within the Scandinavian varieties could be analyzed
as results of different forms of language contact with Low German.
In my presentation I will discuss some specific aspects of the language contact between Middle
Low German and Scandinavian, focussing on how theories and methods found within modern language
contact research and sociolinguistics/language sociology have provided new insights when it
comes to studying language contact situations and results. I will relate some of these aspects to my
own work on the language contact in question (Rambø 2009). I will also try to further investigate
some problems and reflections which arose during the work I carried out in my thesis by focussing on
the language users even more specifically, and I will touch upon a few aspects which I find to be important
problems and considerations for further research on this particular language contact period,
and maybe also for language contact studies in general.
Milroy, James 1997. Internal vs external motivations for linguistic change. In: Multilingua 16: 311-323.
Rambø, Gro-Renée 2010. Historiske og sosiale betingelser for språkkontakt mellom nedertysk og skandinavisk i seinmiddelalderen
– et bidrag til historisk språksosiologi. Oslo: Novus forlag.
Thomason, Sarah Grey & Terrence Kaufman 1988. Language Contact, Creolization and Genetic Linguistics. Oxford: University
of California Press.
Trudgill, Peter 2000. On locating the boundary between language contact and dialect contact – Low German and continental
Scandinavian. In: Jahr, E. H. (ed.). Språkkontakt – Innverknaden frå nedertysk på andre nordeuropeiske språk. Copenhagen:
Nordic Council of Ministers, 71-87.

The transition from Old to Modern French: Exit V2, enter obligatory
subject pronouns
Christine Meklenborg Salvesen
University of Oslo
Traditional presentations distinguish between at least five different periods in the history of the
French language: Old, Middle, Classical, Modern, and Contemporary French. I will make the claim
that from a structural point of view, there are only two different periods: Old and Modern French.
Modern French was born in the 16 th century, and the fundamental structures have not changed
since.
What characterises the transition from the old to the new language? First and foremost it was a
change that affected word order. In addition there was a major change involving the pronominal
system. These two changes will be the topic of my talk.
Old French was a verb second (V2) language, much in the same way as present day Norwegian.
The simplest definition of V2 is that the verb always comes in second place in the clause, regardless
of what element that occupies the initial position. A fronted XP thus triggers so-called subject inversion,
and the word order becomes XP–V–S. In generative terms, V2 means that the finite verb moves
to a head in the C-domain and that it needs overt material in its specifier position. The loss of V2 may
thus be defined as the loss of V–to–C movement. This is a fundamental alteration that may be seen
as a parametric change.
The V2 feature does not only affect the word order of the left periphery of matrix clause. It is
linked to other phenomena such as Stylistic Fronting and the existence of a scrambling position in the
left periphery of the vP. When Old French lost verb movement to the C-domain, these phenomena
disappeared as well.
A different, but not unrelated change is the one that takes place in the pronominal system. In Old
French, the use of null subjects was quite common, in particular in V2 contexts. In Modern French
subjects have to be expressed and there is no trace of the Romance pro drop structure. The shift
from pro drop to obligatory expressed subjects is as such another fundamental change. In addition,
the pronominal subjects cliticise towards the end of the old period. This implies that pronominal
subjects in the Old language could be null in certain contexts. If expressed, there was no restriction
as to their position.
The new language which is born in the first half of the 16th century is characterised by a strict
S–V–O structure where all subjects have to be expressed and only nominal subjects may take stress.
These are still the major characteristics of the Modern French language.
Adams, Marianne 1987. From Old French to the Theory of Pro-Drop. In: Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 5: 1–32.
Lightfoot, David 1999. The Development of Language. Acquisition, Change and Evolution. Oxford: Blackwell, Introduction &
Chapter 4.
Poletto, Cecilia 2006. Parallel phases: a study on the high and low left periphery of Old Italian. In: Frascarelli, M. (ed.).
Phases of Interpretation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.