Textual Origins of the Indefinite Article in Swedish

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The present paper studies the earliest stages of the grammaticalization of indefinite article in Old Swedish. The study is based on a corpus of Old Swedish texts and uses the model of grammaticalization as proposed by Heine 1997. The article en, etymologically related to the numeral 'one', is first used to mark new and salient discourse-referents and its primary function is cataphoric. However, en only fulfills this function when ocurring in a sentenceinitial subject NP. In the course of the grammaticalization, neither the sentence-initial position nor the subject function of the NP are required to present new and salient discourse referents.

A Diachronic Analysis of Light Verb Constructions in Old Swedish

“…As was discussed in section 2.1, the presence of an indefinite article is crucial in the development of aspectual nuances in LVCs (Brinton & Traugott 2005), and, as Brandtler & Delsing (2010) note, the indefinite article begins to occur in specific contexts around 1300 before expanding to nonspecific referential contexts by the beginning of the 16th century. Skrzypek (2013, 2014) also notes the parallel development of the indefinite and definite articles, pointing out expansion of ett/en ‘a(n)’ from its use as a numeral to a presentative marker of new information by the 1400s. In other words, the indefinite article begins to become more frequent and expand to new functions in late Old Swedish.…”

“…Other texts exhibit no examples of indefinite articles, or in some cases, only one or two. The topic of indefinite articles in Old Swedish is treated in section 5.2, along with a discussion of Brandtler & Delsing 2010 and Skrzypek 2013, 2014, and the gradual increase of the indefinite article in Old Swedish.…”

The Diachrony of Definiteness in North Germanic

“…The Swedish data reveal that 'one' was first used as a presentative marker under specific circumstances, i.e., clause-initially and with subjects (see also Skrzypek 2013). As early as in Period II the clause-initial position was no longer the only option, and presentative NPs appear later in sentences as well as in first position.…”

“…The rise of articles, both definite and indefinite, is an example of a process of grammaticalization, i.e., a type of language change whereby lexical items gain grammatical meanings or grammatical items gain more grammatical meanings while being subject to certain changes, such as erosion of phonetic and semantic substance, acquisition of a more fixed position in the phrase or loss of independence, as in cliticization or affixation (see Kuryłowicz 1965, Lehmann 1995, Heine 2002, Hopper and Traugott 2003, Lehmann 2004). The process of grammaticalization of the articles has been studied within grammaticalization studies, among others Greenberg (1978), Givón (1981), Heine (1997), Dahl (2004), De Mulder and Carlier (2011), Skrzypek (2012Skrzypek ( , 2013, to name but a few.…”

“…In diachronic studies no such disambiguation is possible; however, other tests are available. Previous studies of indefinite article grammaticalization in Swedish reveal that, at the onset of the grammaticalization, the original numeral 'one' is used with new discourse referents which are picked up by at least one anaphoric expression (Skrzypek 2012(Skrzypek , 2013. There is a tendency to place them clause-initially (stylistically indefinites are not preferred in initial position in modern Swedish); they are also predominantly subjects.…”