Rit (Vísindafélag Íslendinga) - 01.06.1970, Page 285

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upplevelse, Modersmálslárarnas Förenings Ársskrift 1953.
45-49)- _
In this type the real subject cannot be anticipated by a
formal one. It is quite natural, however, to say ja, han lar det,
etc., and permutatedya, det lár han. In this type it seems to me
as if det stands for a sentential object, but it may be possible
to find another solution in the deep structure. One could, for
instance, consider han lár det as a deletion of han lár göra det;
cf. han maste göra det => han maste det and han torde göra det => han
torde det. The substring göra det is the normal proverbaliza-
tion of a Swedish VP, with the exception of VPs with vara,
hava, and, in most cases, bliva as head verbs. In our instance
it stands for han komma (i morgon) in the deep structure of
Kiparsky’s transformational tree.
Finally, I do not conceive of the sentence brevet kangaför-
lorat, och boken kan det ocksa as undoubtedly ungrammatical.
If this sentence seems strange to some Swedes this may be
due to the need of agreement between the participles in
brevet kan gdförlorat, och boken kan ocksd gdförlorad. In instances
where both noun phrases represent the same gender this type
of sentence is fully grammatical: brevet kan gaförlorat, och tele-
grammet kan det ocksa; or more commonly in colloquial speech:
brevet kan ga förlorat, och det kan telegrammet ocksa. As in the
preceding types of sentences the modal kan in this last-
mentioned type may be replaced by lar, torde, or maste, without
losing its grammaticalness.
Gösta Holm'. (1) In his lecture Kiparsky stated that there are
‘transformations which normally do not change meaning,
passive and extraposition.’ Let us look at the sentence kornet
skördades med skara (...) ‘the barley was reaped with sickles...’.
In the parentheses we may put an agent; in so doing we choose
one out of an almost unlimited number of possibilities (e.g.,
bönderna ‘the farmers’, alla, somliga ‘all, some people’, nagon
‘somebody’, etc.). As a rule there is no agent. The sentence
kornet skördades has evidently not the same meaning as nagon
skördade kornet ‘somebody reaped the barley’, since here we