Variation in Nominal Possessive Expressions

Case Studies from Danish and Swedish

Series: 

This book is an account of the variation between two possessive constructions in Danish and Swedish: the s-genitive (husets tak ‘the house’s roof’), and the prepositional construction (taket på huset ‘the roof of the house’). Present-day corpus data, as well as historical data (texts from 1250–1550) are explored. Through statistical and qualitative analysis, various factors that influence the choice between the two constructions are identified. The book offers new data on the genitive variation in Danish and Swedish. The approach is also novel as two closely related Scandinavian languages are compared from both a historical and a contemporary perspective.
Copyright Year:
2024
E-Book (PDF)
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-68218-4
Publication:
27 Nov 2023
Hardback
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-68215-3
Publication:
29 Nov 2023
Cover Variation in Nominal Possessive Expressions

Prices from (excl. shipping):

€138.21€131.00 excl. VAT
Add to Cart
Alicja Piotrowska, Ph.D. (2021), Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, is Assistant Professor of Scandinavian linguistics at that university. She has published monographs and articles on the history of Scandinavian languages, including The Diachrony of Definiteness in North Germanic (Brill, 2021).
Acknowledgements
List of Tables and Figures
Abbreviations

1 Introduction
 1.1 Constraints in Possessive Variation
 1.2 Aim and Research Hypotheses
 1.3 Structure of the Book

2 Possession and Possessive Constructions
 2.1 The Semantic Notions of Possession
 2.2 The Sources of Possession
 2.3 Attributive Possessive Constructions in the World’s Languages

3 Possessive Constructions in Present-Day Danish and Swedish
 3.1 Standard Danish and Swedish
 3.2 Dialects of Danish and Swedish
 3.3 Possessives in the Other Nordic Languages

4 Methods, Sources and Tools
 4.1 Methodology: Functionalism
 4.2 The Corpora
 4.3 Annotation of the Corpora
 4.4 Statistical Tests

5 Possessive Constructions in the History of Danish and Swedish
 5.1 Introduction
 5.2 General Results
 5.3 Variables Affecting the Selection of the Genitive Construction
 5.4 Semantic Notions of Possession
 5.5 Factors Favouring Possessive Constructions: Classification and Regression Tree Analysis
 5.6 Summary

6 Possessive Variation in Present-Day Danish and Swedish
 6.1 Introduction
 6.2 General Frequencies of Attributive Possessive Constructions
 6.3 Variables Affecting the Selection of the s-Genitive vs. the Prepositional Construction
 6.4 Variation between the s-Genitive and the Prepositional Construction: Statistical Models
 6.5 Summary

7 Discussion and Conclusions
 7.1 The Corpus Studies – Summary
 7.2 Constraints on the Use of Adnominal Possessives – Research Hypotheses Revisited
 7.3 Implications for Further Research
Sources
 The Historical Corpus
 The Contemporary Corpus
References
Index
All interested in corpus linguistics and in Scandinavian languages, in particular those with interest in the linguistic expressions of possession. Linguists interested in corpus, historical, and comparative linguistics.
  • Collapse
  • Expand

Manufacturer information:
Koninklijke Brill B.V. 
Plantijnstraat 2
2321 JC
Leiden / The Netherlands
productsafety@degruyterbrill.com