Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2011, Page 157

ÁSGRÍMUR ANGANTÝSSON
The Topic of the Thesis
and an Overview of Methods and Results
The main concern in my PhD study1 is the status of Icelandic among the
Scandinavian languages, in particular from the perspective of morpho-syntactic
theories. Icelandic is known for its robust inflectional system and syntactic char-
acteristics such as subject-verb agreement, non-nominative subjects, Stylistic
Fronting and Vfin-Adv order in all types of subject-initial embedded clauses,
while the Mainland Scandinavian languages typically lack these properties. In a
simplified picture, Faroese, and perhaps Ovdalian (a Scandinavian language (or
dialect) spoken in the western part of central Sweden, also known as Álv-
dalsmálet), can be viewed as standing midway between the two poles. In the liter-
ature on Scandinavian syntax, a central idea has been that morpho-syntactic vari-
ables of this kind are parametrically interrelated. This study is a contribution to
this field of Scandinavian syntax. Of course, the status of Icelandic among the
Scandinavian languages vis-á-vis morpho-syntax is an expansive topic but my dis-
1 I would like to thank my supervisor, Höskuldur Þráinsson, for his constant advice
and support through all of my academic studies. His extensive comments on previous ver-
sions of this thesis led to crucial improvements throughout this work. I also wish to
express my gratitude to the other members of my committee, Molly Diesing and
Þórhallur Eyþórsson, for very helpful comments on the research plan and the thesis draft.
My connection with the research project “Syntactic Variation in Icelandic” (IceDiaSyn),
which formed part of a larger project, “Scandinavian Dialect Syntax” (ScanDiaSyn), made
it possible for me to collect linguistic judgments from people both in Iceland and the other
Nordic countries. I also had the opportunity to present my work at various workshops and
conferences organized by ScanDiaSyn and the Nordic Center of Excellence in
Microcomparative Syntax (NORMS). I am thankful for these fantastic opportunities. My
research also benefitted from the “Tagged Icelandic Corpus” project which is led by Sigrún
Helgadóttir at The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies. Finally, I would like
to thank my opponents for valuable comments and discussions and the dean, Dagný
Kristjánsdóttir, for conducting the defence. — The present overview corresponds almost
exactly to my presentation at the defence, except that I have added a couple of explana-
tory notes and a few references. Note, however, that the overview assumes some famil-
iarity with or access to the thesis itself, with its more extensive discussion, examples and
references, as well as with recent discussion of comparative Scandinavian syntax.
Nevertheless it should give a reasonable idea as to what the thesis is about and help the
reader understand some of the comments and questions that the opponents present
below.
Islenskt máltf (2011), 155-166. © 2011 íslemka málfrtzðifélagid, Reykjavík.