Case in Icelandic

[Johanna Barddal]

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My apologies for cross postings.

The following dissertation will be defended at Lund University on the 22 of
September:

Case in Icelandic - A Synchronic, Diachronic and Comparative Approach by
Johanna Barddal.

Abstract:This dissertation addresses the question of what the function of
morphological case is in Icelandic. The working hypotheses of this book is
that morphological case is a multifunctional category. Firstly, new verbs in
Icelandic were collected and examined to cast light on the productivity of
the morphological cases, revealing that not only are the nominative and
accusative productive in Icelandic but also the dative. Secondly, a
text-based investigation was conducted to find out what the statistical
correlation is between morphological case, syntactic functions and thematic
roles. Thus, a well-stratified corpus was compiled, containing Modern
Icelandic texts from five written genres and one spoken genre. The study
showed that there is a correlation between morphological case and both
syntactic and semantic factors. Thirdly, a similar corpus was compiled for
Old Icelandic, containing four genres which are closest in content to the
Modern Icelandic genres. Some frequency differences were found between the
two corpora, reflecting a change in the use of morphological case from Old
to Modern Icelandic. Fourthly, a comparison of the development of case in
English, Swedish and German revealed that the internal order of the changes
within the case system is the same for the Germanic languages considered,
with English leading the development, followed closely by Swedish, then
German, and Icelandic lagging behind. The theoretical approach adopted in
this work is that of Construction Grammar and the Usage-based model. The
book also provides a critical view of the generative distinction between
structural and lexical/idiosyncratic case.

The book is for sale at the Scandinavian department at Lund University
(sofia.boberg at nordlund.lu.se).

Best,
Johanna Barddal





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