Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1985, Page 71

Language Shift in an Icelandic Child
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Neither are adjectives the most frequently borrowed item in the code-
switching data. The greatest word class category, of the inappropriately
inflected words, is pronouns, particularly the demonstrative pronouns
and the personal pronouns. In 1982, 39.6% of the words in the data are
pronouns. In 1984 these are 51.3% of the data. The personal pronouns
are most often the words það ‘it’, and hann ‘he’, used in nominative
when a different case would be expected. For example, sentence (6):
(6) það er einhver svona línu á hann
there is a kind of line on he
The personal pronoun hann should be in dative honum ‘him’. The
personal pronouns in English are one of the few categories which have
kept some case distinctions (e.g. he, him).
The demonstrative pronoun þessi ‘this’ seems to occur more often in
the data than other words. In 1982 it occurs six times in five various
forms but in 1984 Baldur uses it always in masculine/feminine nomi-
native singular þessi, no matter what the following gender, number or
case of the noun is. For example, the following examples:
(7) og líka þessi bílar
and also this cars
(8) með þessiforinginn
with this leader
The phrase should be in dative (meö þessum foringja).
(9) ég fékk ekki þessi mynd
I didn’t get this picture
The demonstrative pronoun þessi should agree with the noun and be in
feminine, accusative singular þessi. Baldur has clearly started to use this
form of the demonstrative pronoun as an unmarked word, which does
not need to agree with other words in the phrase in any way. If this were
an overt influence from English, it might have been expected that he
would have kept the number distinction singular and plural like in
English (this vs. these). In 1982 33% of the number errors involve pro-