Case and sequence in coordination : A corpus-based study of English and Danish

Abstract

Although much research has been done on case and sequence within coordination structures separately, few studies have investigated the impact the two have on each other. Moreover, very little research has dealt with the striking similarity of English and Danish regarding case and sequence within CoDPs. This thesis, therefore, aimed to explore this matter to uncover the complex system which determines what pronoun cases can be used in what sequences in CoDPs in the two languages. Through the study of four corpora from two periods in time, the behaviour of English and Danish pronouns was examined to determine the special properties that allow for unexpected use of case forms – e.g., the use of the first person singular nominative I/jeg in non-subject contexts and the use of its oblique counterpart me/mig in subject contexts. Contributing to the complexity of the behaviour of personal pronouns within CoDPs is the inextricable intertwining of case and the sequence of conjuncts making Him and I significantly more acceptable than I and him.

From the investigations of the four corpora, it was found that the use of oblique in unexpected syntactic environments is a widespread phenomenon in both Present Day English and Present Day Danish. The high number of occurrences of unexpected oblique indicates that it is not the standard, generative case system alone that determines what morphological case is used where. Another important syntactic mechanism, namely default case, also plays a role in the distribution of case. It is the alternation between these two mechanisms that causes the unexpected and unpredictable use of oblique form in subject position in English and Danish.

Unexpected nominative, also known as hypercorrection, is also apparent in the data of the four corpora, although much less prominent than unexpected oblique. Unexpected nominative has to do with the absence of a syntactic case specification, just as unexpected oblique. Those instances where case specifications have not been given prior to spell-out and where default oblique case has been supplied are more easily overridden than ‘regular’ oblique. Hence, prescriptive rules and viruses – in this case in the form of nominative – can easily replace the default case resulting in the nominative case from being used unexpectedly.

The corpora investigations of pronouns in CoDPs in English and Danish furthermore demonstrated tendencies that helped uncover the implicit rules which decide what sequences are acceptable in coordination structures and what are not. The primary tendency in the formation of coordination structures is the almost categorical tendency to have I/jeg positioned in the second conjunct, while the remaining pronouns in the vast majority of cases are placed in the first conjunct. As is seen from comparisons with other numbers from similar studies, this so-called politeness norm, which stipulates that the first person pronoun should occur in the last conjunct of the coordination, has only increased in popularity during the past 400 years.

As becomes evident from the current project, it simply cannot be that speakers of English and Danish are wishy-washy when it comes to case and sequence in coordination structures. We are not dealing with random speaker variation but with systematised variation occurring due to certain syntactic properties. The current project has accounted for this systematised variation in case and sequence in English and Danish coordination structures, ascribing the variation primarily to default case and politeness norms.

• author: Bang Lauridsen, Freja
• supervisor: Sten Vikner
• publishing date: 2022-09-14
• type: Thesis
• publication status: published
• subject: General Language Studies and Linguistics
• keywords: Syntax, Comparative, Germanic, Case, English, Danish, Diachronic change, Corpus linguistics, Morphology, Early Modern English, Early Modern Danish, Pronouns
• pages: 90 pages
• language: English
• LU publication?: no
• id: c5076aa0-5c15-4bd9-8df7-a8587742c2e1
• date added to LUP: 2023-10-26 18:39:20
• date last changed: 2023-10-30 14:36:26