Pronominal demonstratives in Scandinavian

[Janne Bondi Johannessen]

Dear Tania, Helge, Bjarne and LFG list members.

I have followed your discussions on the very interesting topic of
pronominal demonstratives in the Scandinavian languages. As some of
you know, I have written a fair amount about this topic in recent
years, and also found that others have done so. Since the discussions
on the LFG list so far have had no references to existing work, I
thought I might enlighten the readers somewhat. Below are some of the
major points that have been mentioned in the list discussion. I refer
to the relevant literature for each point, with a short reference list
at the end:

a)	The prenominal pronouns (han mannen - he the.man 'that man') in the
Scandinavian languages are indeed regarded as demonstratives by many
linguists, such as Faarlund et al., Julien, Josefsson and Johannessen,
i.e. myself,  (see references below).

b)	They are regarded as having a deictic semantics, although there
seems to be some discussion as to what exactly the meaning might be.
Johannessen and  Delsing  think it has to do with the knowledge the
speaker and hearer have of each other, i.e. psychological distance,
while others are more keen to stress discourse prominence (Strahan,
Lie) or related matters (Teleman et al.).

c)	These pronominal demonstratives are distinct from the preproprial
article that can be found in many Scandinavian languages for a number
of reasons to do with stress, categorial combinatorial properties,
morphological make-up and obligatoriness. This has been shown in the
work by Johannessen and Julien.

d)	The pronominal demonstrative is actually stressed (Fretheim and
Amfo, Johannessen)

e)	Syntactically, the pronominal demonstrative behaves differently in
the Scandinavian languages, from being a integrated part of the noun
phrase (e.g. Norwegian) to being less so (Danish), not least due to
the different combinations of demonstrative and definiteness that can
be found (Johannessen, Julien, Josefsson).

f)	The pronominal demonstrative has specific reference (Dyvik,
Faarlund et al., Johannessen, Julien, Lødrup, Strahan).


REFERENCES

Delsing, L.-O. 2003. Syntaktisk variation i nordiska nominalfraser. In
Vangsnes, Ø.A., A. Holmberg and L.-O. Delsing (eds):
Dialektsyntaktiska studier av den nordiska  nominalfrasen. Oslo: Novus
Press.

Dyvik, H.J.J. 1979.Omkring fremveksten av artiklene i norsk. Maaal og
Minne 1-2, Oslo.

Fretheim, Thorstein and N.A.A. Amfo. 2005: Reference, determiners and
descriptive content. Working Papers ISK 2, 87-112. Trondheim: NTNU.

Faarlund, Jan Terje, Kjell Ivar Vannebo and Svein Lie1997. Norsk
referansegrammatikk. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.

Johannessen, Janne Bondi. 2006. Just Any Pronoun Anywhere? Pronouns
and "New" Demonstratives in Norwegian. In Torgrim Solstad, Atle Grønn
and Dag Haug (eds.) A Festschrift for Kjell Johan Sæbø in partial
fulfilment of the requirements for the celebration of his 50th
birthday. Oslo: Unipub.

Johannessen, Janne Bondi. 2007. Den psykologisk distale demonstrativen
i skandinavisk. In: Nordisk dialektologi og sociolingvistik,
Proceedings from  8. Nordiske Dialektologkonference, Århus 2006.
Århus: Peter Skautrup Centret for Jysk Dialektforskning, Aarhus
Universitet 2007, 217-226.

Johannessen, Janne Bondi.  2008. Psykologiske demonstrativer. In
Johannessen Janne Bondi, and Kristin Hagen (eds.). 2008: Språk i Oslo.
Ny forskning omkring talespråk. [Language in Oslo. New research on
spoken language. ] Oslo: Novus forlag.

Johannessen, Janne Bondi. 2008. Pronominal psychological
demonstratives in Scandinavian: their syntax, semantics and
pragmatics. Ms. submitted to journal.

Josefssson, Gunlög.1999. On the semantics of Scandinavian pronouns and
object shift. In H.v.Riemsdijk (ed): Clitics in the Languages of
Europe. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Josefssson, Gunlög. 2005. Semantic and grammatical genders in Swedish
– independent but interacting dimensions. Lingua.

Julien, Marit. 2005. Nominal Phrases from a Scandinavian Perspective.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins publishing Company.

Lie, Svein. 2008. Veldig sånn festejente. In Johannessen Janne Bondi,
and Kristin Hagen (eds.). 2008: Språk i Oslo. Ny forskning omkring
talespråk. [Language in Oslo. New research on spoken language. ] Oslo:
Novus forlag.

Lødrup, Helge. 1982. De og dem i dialekten på Oslo vestkant ['De and
dem in the dialect of West-end Oslo'.] Norskrift 37:54-58.

Strahan, Tania. 2007. The specific article in Norwegian. Ms. Submitted
to Special issue of AJL, edited by Marie Fellbaum-Korpi.

Teleman, Ulf, Erik Andersson & Staffan Hellberg. 1999. Svenska
Akademiens Grammatik. Stockholm: Svenska Akademien.

Best wishes,
Janne

-- 
Janne Bondi Johannessen
Professor, The Text Laboratory, ILN
P.O.Box 1102 Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, Norway
Tel: +47 22 85 68 14, mob.: +47 928 966 34
www.hf.uio.no/tekstlab