Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1981, Side 97

Unmarked Dejinite NPs and Referential Cohesion 95
taka ríkra manna dœtr ok flytja 0 heim til sín
INF ADJ GEN ACC. CONJ INF ADV PREP GEN
brought daughters of rich men and taken (them) home to his house,
ok lá hjá 0 viku eða tvær, sendi 0 heim síðan .. .
CONJ 3sg PREP ACC CONJ ACC 3 Sg ADV ADV
and lay with (them) a week or two sent (them) home thereafter .. .
(Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, Hkr. 1:290)
4. Semantic Factors
Besides the pragmatic notion of discourse topic, two semantic factors
contribute to the greater topicality of unmarked anaphoric nouns:
humanness and singular number. It is common sense to expect that
humans have a higher topicality than non-humans, so that humanness
has less need of definite marking, as this table taken from a count of
the nouns in Magnússona saga, Hkr. I. comparing definites with ana-
phoric zero-marked nouns shows:
Table II. The Human Factor in Definite Marking
subjects DEFINITE + human 5 MARKED -f human 10 UNMARKED ANAPHORIC + human -5- human 32 4
direct objects 2 18 5 3
datives 8 4 2 6
genitives 0 6 4 1
prep. phrases 3 70 10 49
These data show that in every case except the dative, an anaphoric
human noun is more likely to be unmarked than marked. Why the
dative is different is unclear, though the category as counted does in-
clude indirect objects, benefactives, experiencer datives, extent of
comparison, and inalienable possession, so it is scarcely monolithic. The
surprising number of inanimate unmarked nouns in prepositional
phrases is probably due to the repetition of formulaic phrases which
can be assumed to antedate the suffixed definite (Hodler 1954:105,
even though his two examples, which both cite body parts followed by
a dative pronoun, might be more easily accounted for in another way).
The more important the human, the more known lie is and the less