CASE IN ICELANDIC

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements 9

1 Introduction 11

1.1 Introduction to Morphological Case in Icelandic 11

1.2 Theories of Case 14
1.2 Hypothesis and Goals 16
1.3 Methods 18
1.5 Disposition 19

PART I 21

2 Construction Grammar and the Usage-Based Model 21

2.1 Introduction 21
2.2 Background 21
2.3 Basic Assumptions 22
2.4 Network Models 26
2.5 Radical Construction Grammar 29
2.6 The Usage-based Model 30
2.7 Morphological Case 33
2.8 Summary 39

3 Syntactic and Semantic Analysis 41

3.1 Introduction 41
3.2 Syntactic Overview 41
3.2.1 The Syntactic Analysis 41
3.2.2 Morphological Case and Syntactic Functions 51
[Link] Nominative 51
[Link] Accusative 51
[Link] Dative 53
[Link] Genitive 54
[Link] Summary 56
3.3 Semantic Overview 57
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3.3.1 The Semantic Analysis 57

3.3.2 Morphological Case and Thematic Roles 65
[Link] Nominative 65
[Link] Accusative 67
[Link] Dative 69
[Link] Genitive 70
[Link] Summary 72

4 Statistical Distribution of Case in Modern Icelandic 75

4.1 Introduction 75
4.2 The Investigation 75
4.2.1 The Corpus 76
4.2.2 The Tagging of the Texts 78
4.2.3 Grammatical Analysis 79
4.2.4 Comparison with Older Studies 80
4.3 Frequencies 85
4.3.1 Morphological Case and Syntactic Functions 86
4.3.2 Morphological Case and Thematic Roles 91
4.3.3 Syntactic Functions and Thematic Roles 95
4.3.4 Morphological Case, Syntactic Functions and
Thematic Roles 100
4.3.5 Conclusions 102
4.4 Summary 107

5 Productivity of the Cases 109

5.1 Introduction 109

5.2 The Icelandic Data 109
5.2.1 A Sample of New Icelandic Verbs 109
5.2.2 Icelandic Schematic Constructions 112
5.3 The Findings 117
5.3.1 General Conclusions 118
5.3.2 Predictions of Different Theories on Productivity 119
5.3.3 The Argument Structure of Novel Verbs 130
[Link] Cluster Attraction 130
[Link] Isolate Attraction 131
[Link] Argument Structure Borrowing 132
5.3.4 Case 134
[Link] The Novel Usage of the Dative Case 134
[Link].1 Dative Subjects 134
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[Link].2 Dative Objects 137

[Link] The Novel Usage of the Accusative Case 139
[Link] A Choice of Accusative or Dative 141
5.4 Summary 142

6 Other Functions of Case Morphology 145

6.1 Introduction 145

6.2 Case as a Lexical Device 146
6.3 Human vs. Non-human 148
6.4 Equality vs. Non-equality 149
6.5 Directed vs. Undirected Motion 151
6.6 Dative of Movement/Transfer 151
6.7 The Nominative vs. the Dative Passive 156
6.8 The Nominative vs. the Dative Ergative 157
6.9 The Semantics of the Syntactic Cases 158
6.10 Summary 160

PART II 163

7 Case in Old Icelandic and the Development of Case

in the Germanic Languages 163

7.1 Introduction 163

7.2 The Investigation 163
7.2.1 The Text Material 164
7.2.2 The Tagging of the Texts 166
7.2.3 The Vocabulary 167
7.2.4 The Morphological Analysis 167
7.2.5 The Syntactic Analysis 168
7.3 Frequencies 174
7.3.1 Morphological Case and Word Category 174
7.3.2 Morphological Case and Syntactic Functions 178
7.3.3 Morphological Case and Thematic Roles 183
7.3.4 Syntactic Functions and Thematic Roles 184
7.3.5 Morphological Case, Syntactic Functions and
Thematic Roles 186
7.3.6 Conclusions 188
7.4 Theories on the Development of Case 188
7.4.1 Synthetic to Analytic 189
7.4.2 Case and Word Order 191
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7.4.3 Case and the Definite Article 192

7.4.4 Structural vs. Lexical Case 193
7.4.5 The Predictions of Construction Grammar and
the Usage-based Model 196
[Link] Icelandic 197
[Link] Swedish 201
[Link] English 202
[Link] German 203
7.4.6 The "Blended" Construction 204
7.4. Conclusions 206
7.5 Summary 208

8 Summary 211

Bibliography 219

Corpus of Written Modern Icelandic 219

Corpus of Spoken Icelandic 221
Corpus of Written Old Icelandic 222
Excerpted Dictionaries 225
References 225

Appendix A: Frequency Tables 237

Appendix B: Predicates occurring in the Oblique subject

construction 249

Appendix C: Neologisms in the Icelandic Verb Vocabulary 251

Appendix D: Possible Constructions of Icelandic Novel Verbs 267

Index 275
 CASE IN ICELANDIC

Acknowledgements

I begin by thanking my supervisor, Christer Platzack, for his support,

friendship, linguistic discussions, comments on various versions of the
dissertation, and his endless interest in my work. I thank you, Christer, for
not giving up on me when I was most defiant in my own search for
theoretical independence. I also thank my co-supervisor, Eiríkur
Rögnvaldsson at the University of Iceland, for discussions and comments
on the dissertation, and linguistic support over the years.
In addition, I am indebted to the following people who have read
and commented on the work presented in this book, or parts of it: Adele
Goldberg, Bill Croft, Halldór Á. Sigurðsson, Joan Maling, Jóhannes G.
Jónsson, Kendra Willson, Lars-Olof Delsing, Ute Bohnacker, Vigfús
Geirdal, Willem Hollmann, Þórhallur Eyþórsson, and the audiences of
various seminars and conferences around the world where I have
presented earlier versions of this work. In particular, I thank Lars-Olof for
detailed comments and various suggestions to improve this book.
I have been fortunate that both my statistical consultant and my
English language consultant speak Icelandic. That has been a great asset. I
hereby thank Anders Holtsberg for statistical consultation and Alan Crozier
for correcting my English.
I feel grateful to everybody in the Department of Scandinavian
Languages at Lund University. Without you I would not be here today. Of
my colleagues in Lund I feel especially in debt to Adriana Ojeda-F, Gunlög
Josefsson, Halldór Á. Sigurðsson, Lars-Johan Ekerot, Lillemor Santesson,
Ute Bohnacker and Valéria Molnár for support. My thanks also go to all
my other colleagues in Lund, and the friends I have made there over the
years, too numerous to mention here.
I am also greatly indebted to my colleagues in the NOS-H project
"Focus Structure, Word Order and Thematic Structure", running from
1995-2000. I thank Valéria Molnár (Sweden), Lars Heltoft (Denmark),
Jorunn Hetland (Norway), and Marja Järventausta (Finland) for our joyful
meetings over the years and for support and friendship. In particular, I
thank Valéria Molnár for her encouragement.
I have spent this last year of dissertation writing in the Department
of Linguistics at the University of Manchester. I am immensely grateful to
the department for having welcomed me as a Visiting Research Fellow and
providing me with work environment and all facilities. Thank you, Kersti,
for that and for helping me with all kinds of practical matters. I am
grateful to everybody at the department, in particular my room-mates
 CASE IN ICELANDIC

Erika Chisarik, Ioanna Sitaridou, Katrin Hiietam, Rob O'Connor and

Sandra Paoli for their social and emotional support. Thank you, Rob, for
always having the time to answer all my questions. I also want to thank
the secretary, Carolyn Cook for her friendliness and interest. For
particularly stimulating linguistic discussions and support, I thank my
friends in the cognitive collective: Bill Croft, Chiaki Taoka, Maike Nielsen,
Willem Hollmann and Violeta Sotirova. For special friendship I thank
Willem and Vito. My deepest gratitude also goes to Tolli and Rósa for
everything they have done for me during this year in Manchester. I thank
you, Tolli, for all our stimulating linguistic discussions. These have been a
real pleasure.
My doctoral studies have been funded with generous graduate
student fellowships from Lund University, RANNÍS (The Icelandic
Research Council) and STINT (The Swedish Foundation for International
Cooperation in Research and Higher Education). I have also received
research grants from NOS-H (The Nordic Research Councils for the
Humanities), the Crafoord Foundation, and Gunvor och Josef Anérs
stiftelse, for various parts of the doctoral project. My grandmother,
Sesselja G. Barðdal, contributed financially to the final stretch of the
dissertation writing. The following funding bodies have made smaller
contributions: Dept. of Scandinavian Languages, Fil dr. Uno Otterstedts
fond, Knut och Alice Wallenbergs stiftelse, Kungliga Humanistiska
Vetenskapssamfundet i Lund, Landshövding Per Westlings minnesfond,
Letterstedtska föreningen and Syskonen Anna Cecilia och Otto Sigfrid
Granmarks stipendiefond. Had it not been for this funding my doctoral
studies would not have been completed.
When compiling the text corpora used in the research presented in
Chapters 4 and 7, I gained access to the private libraries of some of my
fellow Icelanders in Lund and Manchester: Árni Sverrisson, Guðrún
Valsdóttir, Haukur Viggósson, Hrefna Róbertsdóttir, Ragnar Ásmunds-
son, Rannveig Ólafsdóttir, Steingrímur Jónsson, Vigfús Geirdal and
Þórhallur Eyþórsson. I thank them and their families.
I am very grateful to Ulla Holmström and her family in Veberöd for
having provided me with childcare when I desperately needed it, over a
period of many years. My deepest thanks go to them. I am also immensely
grateful to my family in Iceland for their support, especially to my
grandmother, Sesselja G. Barðdal, to whom I dedicate this book. Last but
not least, I thank my son, Hörður, whom I love the most, for his endless
patience towards an ever-working mum.

Manchester and Lund, June 2001

Jóhanna Barðdal