Orð og tunga - 01.06.2017, Síða 203

Anton Karl og Einar Freyr: Um af-liði í ópersónulegri þolmynd 193
Þorláks saga helga. 1989. Elsta gerð Þorláks sögu helga ásamt jarteinabók
og efni úr yngri gerðum sögunnar. Ásdís Egilsdóttir (ritstj.). Reykjavík:
Þorlákssjóður.
Lykilorð
ópersónuleg þolmynd, af-liðir, málheildir
Keywords
Impersonal Passives, ‘by’-phrases, corpora
Abstract
This paper discusses the use of ‘by’-phrases in Impersonal Passives in Icelandic. It
has been claimed in the literature on Icelandic syntax that ‘by’-phrases that express
the agent are not very good or even ungrammatical in Impersonal Passives. The pa-
per shows that this point of view oversimplifi es the facts because various examples
of this patt ern can be found in natural data and these examples do not seem to refl ect
mistakes in linguistic performance. We discuss examples from the Icelandic treebank
and from the web and we suggest that ‘by’-phrases are more likely to be used in
Impersonal Passives if they involve new information and/or if they are heavy. One of
the conclusions of the article is that large and well annotated corpora are important
for linguistic research that focuses on rare constructions.
Anton Karl Ingason
Íslensku- og menningardeild
Hugvísindasviði Háskóla Íslands
antoni@hi.is
Einar Freyr Sigurðsson
University of Pennsylvania
einarsig@ling.upenn.edu
tunga_19.indb 193 5.6.2017 20:28:07