Pronuns in Danish

[Tania Strahan]

Hi Bjarne,

thanks for your comments. Now I've had time to digest them (and read
your paper, which was pleasingly enlightening, thanks!), how's this
for a suggestion: Based on the examples you gave, specificity is
clearly important in the Danish pronoun-determiner thingy, so could
the lexical entries for 'ham' and 'hende' include a specification of
spec=+, meaning these pronouns can only unify with something that is
also specific? This would presumably include proper names, PPs,
restrictive relative clauses and definite DPs, which would be very
nice indeed. In Norwegian and Swedish it would be 'han' and 'ho' which
carried this specification.

I'm not sure how to deal with the pronoun appearing with either the
definite suffix or the definite article though, since eg Vestjysk
requires just the article (not having the suffix), but Swedish appears
to allow either the suffix or both the suffix and article (according
to several sources), as you say Standard Danish also allows.

But how does spec=+ sound as part of the lexical entry for certain pronouns?

best,
Tania

>  In the Danish grammar we capture the behaviour in (7) by using
>  instantiated symbols. The lex. entry for "den" /that carries the
>  specification def=+_. Underscore means that this value can never unify
>  with anything else (as the PRED-value). Since the noun "damen"/the.lady
>  also carries the specification def=+_ the DP in (7) is correctly ruled
>  out. The intuition is that definiteness can only be supplied from one
>  source.


On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 9:41 AM, Bjarne Ørsnes <boe.isv at cbs.dk> wrote:
> Hi Tania
>
>  For some reason I do not get the postings from the LFG-list. I write to
>  you directly, but feel free to post in on the list if you make some kind
>  of summary.
>
>  I really appreciate that you are working on this matter, since I have
>  been struggling with it for a long time. I have some comments on your
>  and Helges discussion, and your initial problem description - from a
>  Danish point of view.
>
>  1) you write that "some dialects (Danish, Norwegian, Swedisch) allow you
>  to have the pronoun determiner with another definite determiner". This
>  is indeed the general case in colloquial, but standard Danish and not
>  dialectal at all. There is plenty of evidence that the pronoun attaches
>  to a DP:
>
>  (1) ham den store man
>      him the big man
>
>  (2) hende din nye kone, som jeg lige har hilst på
>      her your new wife, whom I  just said hello to
>
>  I would tend to say, that it is some kind of appositional structure,
>  since we seem to have to independent DPs. In some cases, you do get
>  "plain" demonstratives attaching to DPs:
>
>  (3) dette mit største ønske
>      this my biggest wish
>
>  But these examples are very formal, and extremely marked. Quite the
>  opposite of the examples with pronouns in (1) and (2). I find it
>  difficult to maintain that the pronoun is a demonstrative in (1) and (2)
>  - if so, the are remarkably different from other demonstratives.
>
>  2) I don't quite know what the correct semantic generalization is, but
>  as you mention, accusative case is always used with restrictive
>  modifiers in Danish, but not with paranthetical. Cf. the following
>  examples with relative clauses:
>
>  (4) hende der lige var kommet hjem fra ferie (restrictive rel.clause)
>      her who had just returned from her vacation
>
>  (5) hun der lige var kommet hjem fra ferie (paranthetical rel.clause)
>      she who had just returned from her vacation
>
>  Maybe this should be seen in a broader context: nominative case is very
>  rarely used in Danish. Extracted subject pronouns are in the accusative
>  case, so maybe there is even an adjacency condition (I have a paper on
>  this in the LFG02 proceedings from Athens). But I don't quite know if
>  the semantic distinction in (4) and (5) can be combined with the
>  extraction behaviour.
>
>  Actually, the business with restritive modification is not restricted to
>  the 3. person pronouns. You can also get a non-specific reading with 2.
>  person pronouns:
>
>  (6) dig, der har gjort det her, ryd op
>      you.ACC who did this, clean this up
>
>  (in a situation of a teacher standing in front of a class and someone
>  has messed up the room, but he doesn't know who).
>
>  So if you maintain that this use of the pronouns is a demonstrative, we
>  would perhaps also need person distinctions in the demonstratives, or
>  maybe one could argue  that the use of "dig"/you.ACC in (6) is also 3.
>  person, which gives us a very complicated picture of the pronouns and I
>  am not sure what the argumentation would look like.
>
>  3) As you say, we do not get double definitess marking in Danish (this
>  is again an argument against analyzing the pronouns attaching to
>  definite DPs as demonstratives:
>
>  (7) *den damen
>       that the.lady
>
>  (8) hende damen
>      her the.lady
>
>  In the Danish grammar we capture the behaviour in (7) by using
>  instantiated symbols. The lex. entry for "den" /that carries the
>  specification def=+_. Underscore means that this value can never unify
>  with anything else (as the PRED-value). Since the noun "damen"/the.lady
>  also carries the specification def=+_ the DP in (7) is correctly ruled
>  out. The intuition is that definiteness can only be supplied from one
>  source.
>
>  Again, this is extremely interesting. I am looking forward to seeing
>  your analysis.
>
>  Best,
>  Bjarne
>
>



-- 
||  Dr Tania E. Strahan
||  Postdoctoral Fellow
||  Nýi Garður, Háskóli Íslands
||  +354 525 5208, tania at hi.is