Danish in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar Draft comments welcome! Stefan Müller Bjarne Ørsnes
[email protected] [email protected] Institut für Deutsche und Niederländische Philologie Fachbereich Philosophie und Geisteswissenschaften Freie Universität Berlin Friday 12th October, 2012 For Friederike ix Danish Danish is a North-Germanic language and belongs to the continental Scandinavian languages. Preface Its closest siblings are Norwegian (Bokmål) and Swedish. It is the official language of Denmark and also of the Faroe Islands (besides Faroese). It used to be an official language in Iceland, Greenland and the Virgin Islands. In Greenland Danish is still widely used in the administration. The aim of this book is twofold: First we want to provide a precise description of a large frag- Danish is spoken by approximately 5 million people in Denmark, but it is also spoken by mem- ment of the Danish language that is useful for readers regardless of the linguistic framework bers of the Danish minority in the region of Southern Schleswig and by groups in Greenland, they work in. This fragment comprises not only core phenomena such as constituent order and Norway and Sweden. Of course, there are also Danish-speaking immigrant groups all over the passivizating, but to a large extent also a number of less-studied phenomena which we believe world. to be of interest, not only for the description of Danish (and other mainland Scandinavian lan- Danish is an SVO-language like English, but it differs from English in being a V2-language guages), but also for comparative work in general.