Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2003, Page 40

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Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson og Þórhallur Eyþórsson
SUMMARY
‘Changes in Subject Case in Icelandic’
Keywords: subject case, Dative Substitution, language change, diffusion, social fact-
ors, syntax
In this paper it is argued that changes in subject case currently underway in Icelandic
involve the replacement of irregular case by regular (structural/thematic) case. This
takes place because the language leamer fails to acquire irregular subject case. Thus,
a change has occurred but its diffusion is subject to various extemal factors in the
language community.
The main objective of this paper is to investigate the extent of these changes on the
basis of a recent survey on subject case in Icelandic. The survey was conducted in 2001
comprising 845 eleven year old children. The main results can be summarized as foll-
ows:
First, a comparison with the survey by Asta Svavarsdóttir (1982) indicates that
substitution of dative case for an original accusative on experiencer subjects (Dative
Substitution or ‘Dative Sickness’) has increased during the past two decades. The
results suggest that Dative Substitution varies from one verb to another depending on
the frequency of the verb and possibly also its semantics.
Second, the survey shows that the use of subject case is correlated with various
social factors. Thus, Dative Substimtion is most common among children whose
mothers have only finished elementary school (grunnskóli), and least common among
children whose mothers have a university education. The phenomenon is also more
prevalent among boys than girls. Dative Substitution is widespread throughout
Iceland but its occurrence seerns to be least common in the Reykjavík area. Within
this area Dative Substitution is most frequent in the eastem part of Reykjavík (Breið-
holt, Árbær and Grafarvogur) and least frequent in the inner part of the capital.
Our study indicates that gender and education may have replaced geographical distri-
bution as the most important factors in language variation in Iceland. This result calls for
further studies on the correlation of social factors with current changes in Icelandic.
Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson
Háskóla Islands
Ámagarði við Suðurgötu
IS-101 Reykjavík, ÍSLAND
jj@hi.is
Þórhallur Eyþórsson
Department of Linguistics
University of Manchester
Manchester, M13 9PL
ENGLAND
tolli@man.ac.uk