Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2008, Blaðsíða 109

LÁNISTICIN OC DANSKTÍ FØROYSKUM
107
due to Danish influence. But why should
topicalization be the only explanation for
the spread of Negation + Verb?
Danish has this structure and Faroese
has, as mentioned in Thráinsson et al. (2004:
438 ff), developed a system of its own. This is
exactly what we would expect to find in lan-
guage replication (Heine and Kuteva 2005:
81, Thomason & Kaufman 1988:62, in which
they claim that language replication is not a
case of mere copying).
Ditransitive verbs likegei/a 'to give' have
a dative benefactive and an accusative
theme in Faroese and lcelandic; see for ex-
ample Thráinsson (2007:216ff), Petersen and
Adams (2008: 77).
(7) ]ógvan gav konuni bókina.
John gave woman-the-dat(benefactive)
book-the-acc.(theme)
'John gave the book to the woman'
According to Sapir (1921:150-55), there is a
tendency within languages to change in cer-
tain waysas a result of structural imbalances,
a concept which he refers to as drift.
By looking at the Germanic languages,
for example, or particularly the Scandinavian
languages, it is evident that genetically re-
lated languages drift in the same direction
from synthetic to analytical languages. This
is what happens in the incipient change in:
(8) Jógvan gav bókina til konuna. (Far.)
John gave book-the-acc.(theme) to
woman-the-acc.(benefactive)
'John gave the book to the woman.'
The accusative theme bókina 'the book’ has
moved to the position right after the verb
and the benefactive konuna 'the woman' is
the compliment of the PP til 'to', just as in
Danish - or for that matter English.
Using lcelandic as a control parameter,
PP + DP as seen in (8) and (9) are ungram-
matical (Thráinsson 2007).
Recent research has shown that Faroese
allows PP + DP (Petersen 2006, Jónsson
2008). (9) is an example from the written
language:
(9) Lærarin ...gevur prógvið til luttakarar-
nar.
teacher-the-nom. ... gives-3.p.sg. certifi-
cate-the-acc. to participants-acc.pl.
‘The teacher gives the certificate to the
participants.'
(Dimma 01/08/06)
Ditransitive constructions have also been
studied by Jónsson (2008) as part of a larger
Scandinavian research project into dialect-
syntax called ScanDiaSyn. He and his Faroese
assistants distributed questionnaires among
243 speakers on the Faroe Islands. Among
the sentences in this judgment test were
those with the ditransitive verbs selja 'to sell'
and geva 'to give'. The results are presented
in (10):
(10a) Hann seldi [DP konuni [DP bilin]].
(81%)
he-nom. sold-3.p.past woman-the-dat.
car-the-acc.
'He sold the car to the woman.'
(10b) Hann seldi [DP húsini [PP til [DP
Jógvan]], (93%)
he-nom. sold-3.p.past. house-the-acc. to
John-acc.
'He sold John the house.'
(10c) Hon gav [DP Turið [DP bókina]] (97,1%)
She-nom. gave-3.p.past Turið-dat. book-
the-acc.
'She gave Turið the book.’