Thorhallur Eythorsson - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Thorhallur Eythorsson

A major argument against the feasibility of reconstructing syntax for proto-stages is the widely ... more A major argument against the feasibility of reconstructing syntax for proto-stages is the widely discussed lack of directionality of syntactic change. In a recent typology of changes in argument structure constructions based on Germanic (Barðdal 2015), several different, yet opposing, changes are reported. These include, among others, processes sometimes called dative sickness, nominative sickness, and accusative sickness. In order to tease apart the roles of the different processes, we have carried out a phylogenetic trait analysis on a predefined data set of twelve predicates found across the Germanic phyla using the MULTISTATE method. This is, as far as we are aware, the first application of the MULTISTATE method (Pagel et al. 2004) in historical syntax. The results clearly favor one of the models, the dative sickness model, over any other model, as this model is the only one that can accurately account for both the observed diversity of case frames and the independently proposed philological reconstructions. Methods of evolutionary trait analysis can be used to model evolutionary paths of argument structure constructions, and they provide the perfect testing ground for hypotheses arrived at through philological reconstruction, based on classical historical-comparative methods.*

John Benjamins eBooks, 2018

Indogermanische Forschungen, Sep 26, 2017

A subject analysis of oblique subject-like arguments remains controversial even across the modern... more A subject analysis of oblique subject-like arguments remains controversial even across the modern languages where the available data are not finite: while such arguments are considered syntactic subjects in Icelandic, they have more often been analyzed as objects in Lithuanian, for example. This issue has been left relatively unattended for the ancient Indo-European languages outside of Sanskrit (Hock 1990), Gothic (Barðdal & Eythórsson 2012) and Ancient Greek (Danesi 2015). In this article, we address the status of oblique subject-like arguments in Old Irish, whose strict word order enables us to compare the position (relative to the verb and other arguments) of nominative subject arguments of the canonical type to oblique subject-like arguments. We first establish a baseline for neutral word order of nominative subjects and accusative objects and then compare their distribution to that of oblique subject-like arguments under two conditions: i) on a subject analysis and ii) on an object analysis. The word order distribution differs significantly across the two contexts when the oblique arguments are analyzed as syntactic objects, but not when they are analyzed as syntactic subjects. These findings add to the growing evidence that oblique subject-like arguments should be analyzed as syntactic subjects, although their coding properties are non-canonical.

Milli Mála, 2012

In the wake of the Crash figurative language has been used extensively in Icelandic. In fact, the... more In the wake of the Crash figurative language has been used extensively in Icelandic. In fact, the word crash itself about the economic depression is an example of a particular kind of figurative language known as metaphor. Metaphor is a characteristic of poetry but it is also very common in everyday speech. Many scholars think that metaphor is more important for the understanding of the nature of thought and language than often assumed. This article discusses theories on metaphor which play a crucial role in cognitive studies (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Lakoff 1987) and critical responses to them (Pinker 2007). Keywords: metaphor, language, thought, cognitive studies, linguistics

Elsevier eBooks, 2006

Old Norse is a medieval North Germanic language attested in Norway and Iceland. Most of the evide... more Old Norse is a medieval North Germanic language attested in Norway and Iceland. Most of the evidence comes from texts that were written and preserved in Iceland. Modern Icelandic is closer to Old Norse than any other modern Nordic language. Nevertheless, numerous innovations have taken place in Icelandic, mostly affecting its phonology and syntax rather than its morphology. Among interesting linguistic features are preaspirated stops, oblique subjects, stylistic fronting, and symmetric verb-second. In accordance with the policy of language purism in Iceland, neologisms are created for new concepts rather than borrowing words from other languages. The ancient system of patronymics has been preserved.

Oslo Studies in Language, Jan 21, 2021

Studies in language companion series, Oct 9, 2018

Oxford University Press eBooks, Mar 25, 2020

This chapter studies varieties of “dependent V2” with “broad” (bDV2) and “narrow” (nDV2) distribu... more This chapter studies varieties of “dependent V2” with “broad” (bDV2) and “narrow” (nDV2) distribution—that is, “generalized” and “limited embedded V2”— arising within Icelandic. This pattern is taken to correlate with construals of verbal mood as “dominant” in the former case and “non-dominant” in the latter case, where dominance of verbal mood allows the disregarding of the illocutionary impact of V2. It further shows that the variation fits into a model of historical stages with earlier variants “recruiting” verbal mood for clause combining and drift in later stages towards “autonomous” mood, that is, towards a mood system with enhanced semantico-pragmatic transparency.

Veleia, Dec 13, 2016

Interest in syntactic reconstruction was implicit in the work of the founding fathers of the Comp... more Interest in syntactic reconstruction was implicit in the work of the founding fathers of the Comparative Method, including Franz Bopp and his contemporaries. The Neo-Grammarians took a more active interest in syntactic issues, concentrating especially on comparative descriptive syntax. In the 20th century, typologically-inspired research gave rise to several reconstructions of neutral word order for Proto-Indo-European. This work was met with severe criticism by Watkins (1976), which had the unfortunate effect that work on syntactic reconstruction reached a methodological impasse and was largely abandoned. However, the pioneering work of Hale (1987a), Garrett (1990) and Harris & Campbell (1995) showed that syntactic reconstruction could be carried out successfully. Currently, three different strands of work on syntactic reconstruction can be identified: i) the traditional Indo-Europeanists, ii) the generativists, and iii) the construction grammarians. The reconstructions of the two first strands are incomplete, either due to lack of formal representation, or due to the inability of the representational system to explicate the details of the form-meaning correspondences underlying any analysis of syntactic reconstruction. In contrast, Construction Grammar has at its disposal a full-fledged representational formalism where all aspects of grammar can be made explicit, hence allowing for the precise formulations of form-meaning correspondences needed to carry out a complete reconstruction. This is exemplified in the present paper with a reconstruction of grammatical relations for Proto-Germanic, involving a set of argument structure constructions and the subject tests applicable in the grammar of the proto-stage.

Constructions and frames, Jul 3, 2019

A long-standing divide between Icelandic and German in the literature takes for granted that ther... more A long-standing divide between Icelandic and German in the literature takes for granted that there are non-nominative subjects in Icelandic, while corresponding arguments in German have been analyzed as objects (Zaenen et al. 1985;Sigurðsson 1989). This is based on two differences between these languages: (a) differences with regard to control and conjunction reduction and (b) apparent subject behavior of the nominative indat-nomconstructions in German. This article focuses on the latter, introducing into the discussion the concept of alternating predicates, that is,dat-nompredicates that systematically alternate between two diametrically-opposed argument structure constructions,dat-nomandnom-dat. A comparison between Icelandic and German shows that Icelandicdat-nompredicates are of two types, a non-alternatinglíkatype and an alternatingfalla í geðtype, whereas German seems to exhibit only the alternating type. On this assumption, the apparent subject behavior of the nominative in German is easily explained, since such occurrences in fact involve thenom-datconstruction and not thedat-nomconstruction. Therefore, the subject behavior of the nominative innom-datconstructions does not invalidate a subject analysis of the dative indat-nomconstructions in German. The analysis is couched in the framework of construction grammar.

Studies in Germanic linguistics, Jul 18, 2017

BRILL eBooks, Jun 11, 2020

Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Thi... more Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Veleia

El interés por la reconstrucción sintáctica estaba presente en la obra de los padres fundadores d... more El interés por la reconstrucción sintáctica estaba presente en la obra de los padres fundadores del Método Comparativo, incluidos Franz Bopp y sus contemporáneos. Los neogramáticos retomaron este interés por las cuestiones sintácticas, y se centraron especialmente en la sintaxis descriptiva comparada. En el siglo xx, la investigación de corte tipológico dio lugar a varias propuestas de reconstrucción de un orden de palabras no marcado. Esta labor encontró la oposición crítica de Watkins (1976), lo cual tuvo la desafortunada consecuencia de que el trabajo en reconstrucción lingüística fue prácticamente abandonado. Sin embargo, los trabajos pioneros de Hale (1987a), Garrett (1990) y Harris & Campbell (1995) mostraron que la reconstrucción sintáctica podía ser abordada de modo satisfactorio. A día de hoy, la reconstrucción sintáctica se lleva a cabo en tres corrientes lingüísticas: (i) la indoeuropeística tradicional, (ii) la lingüística formal-generativa, (iii) la gramática de constru...

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 2019

Linguistics, 2015

The diachrony of valency patterns is generally an understudied phenomenon. The present article in... more The diachrony of valency patterns is generally an understudied phenomenon. The present article investigates anticausativization from a diachronic perspective, highlighting the parameters determining the morphosyntactic encoding of this type of intransitivization in two early Western Indo-European languages, Latin and Old Norse-Icelandic. It is shown that the structural and lexical aspects of a verb’s meaning and their interplay with the inherent and relational characteristics of verbal arguments affect the synchronic distribution and the diachronic development of the anticausativation strategies in the languages investigated. These features interact, in the course of time, with changes in the encoding of voice and grammatical relations, such as the demise of the synthetic mediopassive and the recasting of the case system.

Nordic Journal of Linguistics, 2012

This article investigates the morphosyntactic status of dative case in Norwegian, Icelandic, and ... more This article investigates the morphosyntactic status of dative case in Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese. We hypothesize that these three languages represent three diachronic stages signalled synchronically by the degree of preservation or non-preservation of dative under movement. Thus, we explore the synchronic status of dative under passive movement and topicalization in the three languages, while simultaneously paying attention to the larger questions of diachronic preservation and non-preservation of dative. We suggest that our findings have interesting ramifications for the categorization of case as structural and non-structural in generative grammar.

The goal of this paper is to provide a diachronic perspective on Verb-Second (V2) in Germanic. Th... more The goal of this paper is to provide a diachronic perspective on Verb-Second (V2) in Germanic. The take-home message is twofold:(1) equating V2 with V-to-C is a misnomer and (2) the canonical instances of alleged verb movement to I (or alternatively to a position in an extended CP structure) in embedded clauses in languages like Icelandic actually involve V2. It appears that in the earliest Germanic a conspiracy of various “operators” triggered verb movement to C in certain clause types (see Kiparsky 1994, Eythórsson ...

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 2008

Contra the standard account by Maling & Sigurjónsdóttir (2002), I argue that the New Passive in I... more Contra the standard account by Maling & Sigurjónsdóttir (2002), I argue that the New Passive in Icelandic is a passive without NP-movement but with structural accusative case assignment. The absence of structural accusative in the Canonical Passive and its presence in the New Passive is attributed to parametric variation in a case feature in a functional head taking a VP complement. Thus, the New Passive is comparable to the-no/to-construction in Ukrainian, a passive preserving structural accusative case. Moreover, parallels in Norwegian and Faroese are pointed out. Finally, I propose that the New Passive emerged from a reanalysis of the canonical existential passive (það-passive) with a postverbal NP. The locus for the reanalysis involves cases where the canonical existential passive without NP-movement and the New Passive cannot be distinguished morphologically. 'I was beaten.' b. Það var barið litla strákinn. NC it was beaten.N.SG little.DEF.ACC boy.the.ACC 'The little boy was beaten.' c. Það var barið lítinn strák. NC it was beaten.N.SG little.ACC boy.ACC 'A little boy was beaten.' The Canonical Passive is also formed with the auxiliary vera 'be' and a past participle, which, however, exhibits agreement with a nominative NP. It occurs in two kinds of clauses. On the one hand, these are clauses involving full NP-movement, i.e. movement to the canonical subject position ('SpecIP'), as in (2a); this is the 'typical' instantiation of passive, henceforth labeled Full Passive. On the other hand, there are existential clauses containing the expletive það 'it' (the það-passive), as in (2b-c), in which the 'associate' NP of the expletive is in a structurally 'lower' position, surfacing either to the left or to the right of the participle. In the NC the postverbal NP can be definite, but the canonical það-passive (2b-c) only allows indefinite NPs. (2) a. Ég var barinn. CanPass I.NOM was beaten.M.NOM 'I was beaten.' b. Það var lítill strákur barinn. CanPass it was little boy.M.NOM beaten.M.SG 'A little boy was beaten.' c. Það var barinn lítill strákur. CanPass it was beaten.M.SG little boy.M.NOM 'A little boy was beaten.' (4) Stúlkan var lamin. CanPass girl.the.F.NOM was beaten.F.NOM.SG 'The girl was beaten.' (5) a. Það var lamin stúlka. CanPass it was beaten.F.NOM.SG girl.F.NOM 'A girl was beaten.' b. Það var stúlka lamin. CanPass it was girl.F.NOM beaten.F.NOM.SG 'A girl was beaten.' Due to the Definiteness Effect (DE) exhibited by the það-passive, the sentences in (6) are ungrammatical. In this respect the existential passive patterns with other transitive expletive clauses in Icelandic, whereas the NC does not (see 2.2.2 below). 3 (6) a. *Það var lamin stúlkan. it was beaten.F.NOM.SG girl.the.F.NOM b. *Það var stúlkan lamin. it was girl.the.F.NOM beaten.F.NOM.SG In subject-verb inversion contexts, for example topicalizations and yes/no-questions, the element það is absent. 4 (7) a. Í gaer var lamin stúlka. CanPass yesterday was beaten.F.NOM.SG girl.F.NOM 'Yesterday a girl was beaten.' b. Í gaer var stúlka lamin. CanPass yesterday was girl.F.NOM beaten.F.NOM.SG 'Yesterday a girl was beaten.' (8) a. Var lamin stúlka í gaer? CanPass was beaten.F.NOM.SG girl.F.NOM yesterday 'Was a girl beaten yesterday.' b. Var stúlka lamin í gaer? CanPass was girl.F.NOM beaten.F.NOM.SG yesterday 'Was a girl beaten yesterday.' Dative and genitive case with objects of active sentences is 'preserved' in the Canonical Passive, the past participle occurring in the default neuter singular. The finite verb is in the default third person singular. These oblique NPs pass the usual subject tests in Icelandic and are therefore on a par with other oblique subjects (cf. Zaenen, Maling & Thráinsson 1985 and many others). The examples in (9b) and (10b) involve Full Passives. 5 'Someone pushed her in school.' b. Henni var hrint í skólanum. CanPass her.DAT was pushed.N.SG in shool.the 'She was pushed in school.' (10) a. Einhver saknaði kennarans. Active someone missed teacher.the.GEN 'Someone missed the teacher.' b. Kennarans var saknað. CanPass teacher.the.M.GEN was missed.N.SG 'The teacher was missed.' The same applies to það-passives: the dative and genitive is 'preserved' and the past participle is in the default third person singular. In (11) the NP occurs postverbally and in (12) the NP precedes the participle. (11) a. Það var hrint stelpu í skólanum. CanPass it was pushed.N.SG girl.DAT in school.the 'A girl was pushed in school.' b. Það var saknað kennara. CanPass it was missed.N.SG teacher.GEN 'A teacher was missed.' (12) a. Það var stelpu hrint í skólanum. CanPass it was pushed.N.SG girl.DAT in school.the 'A girl was pushed in school.' b. Það var kennara saknað. CanPass it was missed.N.SG teacher.GEN 'A teacher was missed.' As in passives involving nominative NPs (6a), the DE is regularly observed in the Canonical Passive of verbs taking dative and genitive, and therefore (13) and (14) are ungrammatical. (13) a. *Það var hrint stelpunni í skólanum. CanPass it was pushed.N.SG girl.the.DAT in school.the b. *Það var saknað kennarans. CanPass it was missed.N.SG teacher.the.GEN (14) a. *Það var stelpunni hrint í skólanum. CanPass it was girl.the.DAT pushed.N.SG in school.the b. *Það var kennarans saknað. CanPass it was teacher.the.GEN missed.N.SG It should be noted, however, that the sentences in (13), as well as the ones in (11), involving a postverbal NP, would be grammatical for speakers accepting the NC. In (21) a. Það var skammað lítið barn. CanPass/NC it was scolded.N.SG little.NOM/ACC child.NOM/ACC 'A little child was scolded.' b. Það var skammað litla barnið. NC (CanPass) it was scolded.N.SG little.NOM/ACC child.the.NOM/ACC 'The little child was scolded.' Similarly, with dative and genitive NPs only the DE would seem to distinguish the canonical það-passive and the NC (cf. (11) and (13) above). 9 The examples in (22a) and (23a), containing indefinite postverbal dative and genitive NPs, are ambiguous between the canonical það-passive and the NC. The (b)-sentences, on the other hand, are more clearly instantiations of the NC as they contain definite NPs, although even here a 'leakage' in the DE cannot be excluded. (22) a. Það var hrint stelpu í skólanum. CanPass/NC it was pushed.N.SG girl.DAT in school.the 'A girl was pushed in school.' b. Það var hrint stelpunni í skólanum. NC (CanPass) it was pushed.N.SG girl.the.DAT in school.the 'The girl was pushed in school.' (23) a. Það var saknað kennara. CanPass/NC it was missed.N.SG teacher.GEN 'A teacher was missed.' b. Það var saknað kennarans. NC (CanPass) it was missed.N.SG teacher.the.GEN 'The teacher was missed.'