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Adjectives in German and Norwegian

Roehrs, Dorian and Julien, Marit LU (2014) 212. p.245-261
Abstract
In this paper, we demonstrate that adjective endings in the Germanic languages do not pattern uniformly. We illustrate this with nine syntactic contexts: possessives involving proper names and pronominals, embedded and unembedded proper names, “disagreeing” pronominal DPs, appositives, definite adjectives, vocatives, and discontinuous noun phrases. We show that German is subject to lexical and structural conditions but Scandinavian is semantic in nature. In German, the weak endings are feature-reduced forms which always have a specific local relation to a certain type of determiner, which triggers the relevant feature reduction. Adopting Distributed Morphology, this reduction in features is implemented by Impoverishment. In Scandinavian,... (More)
In this paper, we demonstrate that adjective endings in the Germanic languages do not pattern uniformly. We illustrate this with nine syntactic contexts: possessives involving proper names and pronominals, embedded and unembedded proper names, “disagreeing” pronominal DPs, appositives, definite adjectives, vocatives, and discontinuous noun phrases. We show that German is subject to lexical and structural conditions but Scandinavian is semantic in nature. In German, the weak endings are feature-reduced forms which always have a specific local relation to a certain type of determiner, which triggers the relevant feature reduction. Adopting Distributed Morphology, this reduction in features is implemented by Impoverishment. In Scandinavian, the weak endings are an agreement reflex with a semantic feature have semantics of their own. We follow others in that adjectives are in – what is traditionally called – Spec,AgrP. We propose that the relevant semantic feature is in Agr and the adjective agrees with it. Given the language-specific conditions, the strong endings surface in the remaining contexts in both types of languages as the elsewhere case. (Less)
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author
and
organization
publishing date
type
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
publication status
published
subject
keywords
adjectives strong weak, morphology, definiteness, German, Norwegian
host publication
Adjectives in Germanic and Romance
editor
Sleeman, Petra ; van de Velde, Freek and Perridon, Harry
volume
212
pages
245 - 261
publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISSN
0166-0829
ISBN
9789027255952
language
English
LU publication?
yes
additional info
The information about affiliations in this record was updated in December 2015. The record was previously connected to the following departments: Swedish (015011001)
id
264a2254-ae0e-4ed3-90ce-9b63900d3e1a (old id 4317741)
date added to LUP
2016-04-01 13:15:54
date last changed
2018-11-21 20:14:17
@inbook{264a2254-ae0e-4ed3-90ce-9b63900d3e1a,
  abstract     = {{In this paper, we demonstrate that adjective endings in the Germanic languages do not pattern uniformly. We illustrate this with nine syntactic contexts: possessives involving proper names and pronominals, embedded and unembedded proper names, “disagreeing” pronominal DPs, appositives, definite adjectives, vocatives, and discontinuous noun phrases. We show that German is subject to lexical and structural conditions but Scandinavian is semantic in nature. In German, the weak endings are feature-reduced forms which always have a specific local relation to a certain type of determiner, which triggers the relevant feature reduction. Adopting Distributed Morphology, this reduction in features is implemented by Impoverishment. In Scandinavian, the weak endings are an agreement reflex with a semantic feature have semantics of their own. We follow others in that adjectives are in – what is traditionally called – Spec,AgrP. We propose that the relevant semantic feature is in Agr and the adjective agrees with it. Given the language-specific conditions, the strong endings surface in the remaining contexts in both types of languages as the elsewhere case.}},
  author       = {{Roehrs, Dorian and Julien, Marit}},
  booktitle    = {{Adjectives in Germanic and Romance}},
  editor       = {{Sleeman, Petra and van de Velde, Freek and Perridon, Harry}},
  isbn         = {{9789027255952}},
  issn         = {{0166-0829}},
  keywords     = {{adjectives strong weak; morphology; definiteness; German; Norwegian}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{245--261}},
  publisher    = {{John Benjamins Publishing Company}},
  title        = {{Adjectives in German and Norwegian}},
  volume       = {{212}},
  year         = {{2014}},
}