Dahl Östen. Grammaticalization in the North: Noun Phrase Morphosyntax in Scandinavian Vernaculars

Berlin: Language Science Press, 2015. — 297 p. — (Studies in Diversity Linguistics 6). — ISBN: 978-3-944675-57-2.This book has a rather long history — the research it is based on startedmore than fifteen years ago, and it has existed as a downloadable PDF on Stockholm University’s web site for a number of years. I am grateful for the opportunity to have it included in the series Studies in Diversity Linguistics.The text is essentially the same as that of the 2010 version, with some minor revisions and updates.
This book looks at some phenomena within the grammar of the noun phrase in a group of traditional North Germanic varieties mainly spoken in Sweden and Finland, usually seen as Swedish dialects, although the differences between them and Standard Swedish are often larger than between the latter and the other standard Mainland Scandinavian languages. In addition to being conservative in many respects — e.g. in preserving nominal cases and subject-verb agreement — these varieties also display many innovative features. These include extended uses of definite articles, incorporation of attributive adjectives, and a variety of possessive constructions. Although considerable attention has been given to these phenomena in earlier literature, this book is the first to put them in the perspective of typology and grammaticalization processes. It also looks for a plausible account of the historical origin of the changes involved, arguing that many of them spread from central Sweden, where they were later reverted due to the influence from prestige varieties coming from southern Scandinavia.