Adjektivkongruens i estlandssvenska. En studie i förändring och variation

Abstract

This aim of this dissertation is to provide a systematic description of adjective inflection in the Estonia-Swedish dialects on the basis of new and more comprehensive empirical data. Departing from Old Swedish, the study examines the diachronic development of adjective inflection in these dialects. The study also discusses the Estonia-Swedish adjective inflection in relation to previous accounts of gender agreement and noun phrase structure in closely related varieties. The study examines adjective inflection in texts written in nine different Estonia-Swedish dialects. In addition, interviews with the last dialect speakers are conducted. The results reveal several types of variation. The geographical variation is prominent: only two of the nine dialects investigated exhibit identical inflectional paradigms. However, the syntactic variation is of particular interest. All but two dialects wholly or partially display distinct adjectival forms depending on whether the adjective occurs in attributive or predicative position. The agreement patterns identified in the survey indicate that the Estonia-Swedish dialects are typologically distinctive among the Germanic languages. First, several dialects exhibit overt inflection in predicative position but not in attributive position. Second, two dialects employ different inflectional suffixes in attributive and predicative positions. The underlying structure of the noun phrase in Estonia-Swedish appears not to align with that of Standard Swedish. Adopting a Minimalist framework, the dissertation discusses what the adjective inflectional system reveals about the internal structure of the noun phrase in one of the Estonia-Swedish dialects. A central question is whether attributive and predicative adjectives can be analyzed within a unified structural representation. The inflectional suffixes of adjectives in Estonia Swedish bear formal similarities to the Old Swedish adjectival endings for nominative and accusative case. The crucial difference, however, is that these suffixes do not encode case in Estonia-Swedish, but rather grammatical gender. In some of the dialects, a pattern emerges whereby the Old Swedish nominative endings correspond to gender endings in predicative position, while the Old Swedish accusative endings correspond to the gender endings in attributive position. A possible explanation for this development is discussed in terms of exaptation, i.e. the process whereby functionally redundant linguistic material is reassigned a new linguistic function.