1 Variation in morphosyntax: some lessons from Insular Scandinavian

• Main Author: Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Faroe Islands; Ikki; Tú
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.522.2875

In this paper, I will discuss morphosyntactic data from the Insular Scandinavian languages (Icelandic and Faorese) to argue for three basic claims about syntactic variation: (i) Robust intra-speaker variation is possible in cases where there is no significant inter-speaker variation (Jónsson & Eythórsson 2005), (ii) syntactic variation can be stable over time, and (iii) intra-speaker variation may be rooted in one and the same grammar (see Barbiers 2005, Henry 2005 and Adger 2006), i.e. it need not involve competition between two incompatible grammars (Kroch 1994, Yang 2000 and Pintzuk 2002). All of these claims are fairly modest but they are important nevertheless given the fact that intra-personal variation in syntax has only rerely been studied in any detail. To demonstrate the validity of the first point, we can look at the results of a recent survey of 243 speakers in the Faroe Islands. In this survey, the participants were asked to evaluate a number of written test sentences, including examples with verbs where the subject case varies between (an innovative) nominative and (an original) dative: (1) a. Tú nýtist ikki at fara, um tú ikki tímir