Long-Distance Reflexives in Norwegian Tania E. Strahan Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2001 Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics The University of Melbourne Australia Abstract Despite the work of linguists such as Thrainsson, Sigurðsson, Pollard, Sag, Popowich and Kuno, among others, the analysis and explanation of long-distance reflexives (LDRs) continues to be carried out primarily in the field of syntax. A major goal of this thesis is to show that, in Norwegian, both reflexives with local antecedents and reflexives with non-local antecedents obey the same general constraints. These constraints are based upon a confluence of factors including the semantic features of reflexives as opposed to pronouns, syntactic features such as clause structure, prosodic features such as intonation, discourse features such as perspective and pragmatic information such as conversational implicature. A review of the literature on long-distance reflexives reveals several problems with syntactic approaches, the greatest problem being that they are based upon typological tendencies. Because of this, there are exceptions to nearly every analysis. The notions of finite tense, perspective, factivity and logophoricity are relevant to the description and generation of long-distance reflexives in Norwegian, but not exhaustively so. A major contribution of this thesis to the body of literature available on long-distance reflexives is the presentation of new data. Grammaticality judgements were collected from 180 native speakers of Norwegian on sentence frames which are often used as the basis for arguments in the LDR literature. In addition, 27 speakers completed an oral elicitation exercise, where 6 speakers used LDR. Despite the fact that people disagree on the level of acceptability an LDR construction has, this disagreement is regular, and describable in terms of the Extended Reference Point Proposal, which incorporates information derived from semantics, syntax, prosody, discourse and pragmatics. i Declaration I declare that this thesis has been composed by myself and that the research reported herein is my own unless otherwise indicated. This thesis complies with all the regulations for the degree of PhD at the University of Melbourne, and falls below the requisite word limit of 100,000 words. Tania E. Strahan September 2001 ii Acknowledgments There are literally hundreds of people who have worked with me to make this thesis possible – I wish I could personally thank each and every one. Failing that, here is a (partial) list of people whose efforts I must acknowledge. Firstly, my supervisors. In more or less chronological order, these are: Dominique Estival, for helping me through my first year as a PhD student, and for learning about the world of LDR with me! Then came Lesley Stirling, who seemed to have a strange passion for anaphora, and who opened up the world of discourse analysis to me. Next came Nick Evans and Peter Austin, who had both been on my committee from the start. Their apprehension about the scale of this undertaking was duly noted, and I am pleased to be able to add this data now to the general linguistic corpus. And I have to thank Nick Evans for seeing this project through in its final stages. All and any faults that remain in this thesis are not for want of supervisory advice! There is one person who has been a constant throughout this thesis apart from myself, and that is Nick Nicholas. While he did abscond to America several years ago, he has returned occasionally, and he has remained in email contact throughout. I remain indebted to him and his grumpy-bum comments on several thousand drafts ;-) . To Sam Carter, who proved himself invaluable in quickly learning Norwegian and entering data for me, tuuusen takk! To all of my informants, and linguists with whom I had the pleasure of discussing my research in Norway, tusen takk skal Dykk ha! And thanks must go to my basketball team, the Eltham Wildcats ABA team, because without the physical exertion of playing basketball, I most certainly would have gone mad. Congratulations to the majority of my team who can recite the title of my thesis, and even explain what it means!! And finally, thanks to my family and friends (some of whom can confidently recite my topic, too!), in particular Lucien Boland and Leslie Layne (I knew it wasn’t syntax!) iii Table of contents PART I Introduction 1 INTRODUCTION TO LDR......................................................................................................................................1 1.1 Structure of thesis .........................................................................................................................................1 1.2 LDR.................................................................................................................................................................3 1.2.1 Definitions.............................................................................................................................................3 1.3 The problem in more technical terms ........................................................................................................4 1.4 Main features of LDR...................................................................................................................................6 1.4.1 Monomorphemicity..............................................................................................................................6 1.4.2 Subjecthood condition on antecedent ...............................................................................................9 1.4.3 Complementarity effects ...................................................................................................................14 1.4.4 Tensed S barrier..................................................................................................................................16 1.4.5 Subjunctive mood...............................................................................................................................18 1.5 Summary .......................................................................................................................................................20 2 INTRODUCTION TO NORWEGIAN .................................................................................................................... 21 2.1 Overview of Scandinavian.........................................................................................................................21 2.2 Norwegian ....................................................................................................................................................22 2.2.1 Nynorsk................................................................................................................................................22 2.2.2 Bokmål..................................................................................................................................................23 2.2.3 Typological description of Norwegian ...........................................................................................24 2.3 Dialectal variation.......................................................................................................................................31 2.3.1 Trøndersk (Tr).....................................................................................................................................33 2.3.2 Midlandsk (ML) ..................................................................................................................................34 2.3.3 Nordvestlandsk (NV) .........................................................................................................................34 2.3.4 Sørlandsk (S) .......................................................................................................................................35 2.3.5 Nordnorsk (NN)..................................................................................................................................35 2.3.6 Østlandsk (Ø).......................................................................................................................................35 2.3.7 Vestlandsk (V).....................................................................................................................................36 2.3.8 Barriers and connections between regions.....................................................................................36 2.3.9 Summary ..............................................................................................................................................37 2.4 Reflexives in Norwegian............................................................................................................................37 PART II Long-Distance Reflexives 3 INTRODUCTION TO SYNTACTIC ACCOUNTS OF LDR .................................................................................. 41 3.1 Some hypotheses implicit in the Binding Conditions...........................................................................42 3.2 Reinhart and Reuland’s account of Reflexivity .....................................................................................44 3.2.1 Anaphoric expressions ......................................................................................................................44 3.2.2 Condition B..........................................................................................................................................49