The development of the definite article(s)

Different theories have tried to explain the development of the suffixed article (cf.

Delbrück (1916), among others). As is assumed in the literature (cf., for instance, Braunmüller 1982), definite articles commonly develop out of demonstrative pronouns. According to Stroh-Wollin (2009), the Scandinavian languages developed three different definiteness markers. One of them, the free article (h)inn, got

"practically lost in modern Scandinavian, but can occasionally be found in formal (chiefly written) Icelandic." (Stroh-Wollin 2009:4). As can be seen in the chapter on the semantic contributions of the articles and the question of why some languages resort to double definiteness while others do not despite the fact that they have two articles at their disposal, the fact that one of the freestanding articles survived only in Icelandic will be of special interest (see chapter 7).

According to Stroh-Wollin (2009:5), the markers of definiteness which the Scandinavian languages developed are the following:

- The definite suffix –inn (in modern Swedish, Norwegian, Danish –en), which originates from the demonstrative (h)inn

- The preadjectival definite article (h)inn from the same demonstrative, which got lost apart from Icelandic

- The preadjectival definite article sá/þen (in modern Swedish, Norwegian, Danish den) from the demonstrative sá/þen

As the preceding sections have already implied, the puzzle concerning the origin of the articles, especially the suffixed article, has not yet been clearly solved.

Stroh-Wollin (2009) assumes without further discussion two demonstratives of the same kind, namely (h)inn, which oversimplifies the picture. Perridon (1989) discusses in much more detail the question of from which demonstrative the suffixed article derived. According to him, Old Norse had the following demonstratives: sá 'that', sjá 'this', hinn 'that over there/yonder, the', and inn or enn 'that, the', each

displaying a full paradigm with forms inflected for case, gender and number.

According to Perridon (1989:129), there are theories that either assume that inn is the origin of the suffixed article, or that it is hinn, which has its origin in inn strengthened by h- to form hinn, which then developed into the suffixed article. This question is further complicated by the unclear origin of the deictic element h- and whether this h- goes back to strong here-deixis or weaker that-deixis.

According to Noreen (1913), inn is used as an article before adjectives but following nouns, to which gradually it came to be suffixed. The very same inn was reinforced by combination with another pronoun leading to hinn ‘yonder’, which was used instead of inn and enn also as an article. Noreen assumes that the h- in hinn derives from a deictic element with strong here-deixis and that it replaced inn in adjectival modification.

For the purposes of this thesis, the important fact is that even if the precise development of the articles is still being disputed, there is agreement concerning the different sources for the suffixed article and the preadjectival article, namely two demonstrative pronouns making use of two different inflectional paradigms.

Kristoffersen (2002:919) summarizes the discussion as follows. There is one form that basically expresses 'this', and a second one – irrespective of the question whether there were two forms in the first place or whether hinn developed from inn – meaning 'that'. Even if the meaning of sá as ‘this’ and of hinn, inn, enna as 'that' are a matter of debate, (cf. the discussion above), it seems to be the case that the suffixed article developed from the latter, whereas the preadjectival one developed from the former.

(1) a. sá / þessi¹² 'this'

b. hinn, inn

'that' (Kristoffersen 2002:917)

Sá / þessi in (1a) had pronominal inflection, whereas (1b) inflected like indefinite adjectives (as did possessive pronouns). The age of the suffixed article is a

12 The initial alternation of s- and þ- was inherited from Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic.

matter of debate, however. According to Delsing (2002), it is plausible to assume that the independent article developed from the demonstrative pronouns in (1a) and the suffixed article from that in (1b) (Delsing 2002:930-931).

It can be concluded that both the suffixed article in the modern Scandinavian languages (apart from Icelandic) and the preadjectival independent article developed out of demonstratives, but, crucially, they developed from two different demonstratives. Thus it should not come as a surprise that the further development of grammaticalization differs, resulting in different semantic contributions. Stroh-Wollin (2009) also arrives at the conclusion that the preadjectival article (h)inn, which was later replaced by þen (<sá), had a different function from the suffixed definite article. In some of the instances she investigated, (h)inn, which only occurs in contexts with weak adjectives, seems to restrict the reference of the noun phrase.

That this is still the case in the modern Scandinavian languages will be discussed in chapter 7.

Unlike Santelmann (1993), Embick & Noyer (2001) and Schoorlemmer (2009), who all assume the contribution of the articles to be identical and that the suffixed article needs only the host d- to be realized in prenominal position, I assume that the semantic contributions of the articles in Modern Scandinavian is a reflex of their origin. Further support for the hypothesis that the suffixed article and the independent preadjectival article are not identical, neither in form nor in function, comes from the development of the different realizations of definiteness.

In Ancient Nordic (1^st – 7^th century), the beginnings of the development of the suffixed article can be seen in the inscription on the whet-stone of Strøm (around 600 AD):

(2) hali hinó

stone this (Braunmüller 2002:652) The demonstrative pronoun is postposed. This is not very surprising since NP modifiers are normally found in postposition in the early West Nordic languages.

Following Braunmüller (1982), univerbation of postposed elements after weakening of their original (here: deictic) function is not very surprising, either. Another

outstanding phenomenon of that kind in the Northern Germanic languages is the fusion of the originally independent reflexive pronouns sik, sér with verbal endings to form the Modern Scandinavian middles.

The suffixed article –en has a West and South Jutlandic equivalent æ, which also developed from the demonstrative pronoun (h)inn (Perridon 2002:1019). This West and South Jutlandic definiteness marker, however, is placed before the noun.

This means that there is a dialect boundary in Denmark that separates East Jutlandic, which has a suffixed article, from West and South Jutlandic, where two different freestanding articles are used.

(3) a. æ by South/West Jutlandic

DEF town

b. by-en Standard Danish

town-DEF

'the town'

(4) a. den lille by South/West Jutlandic

b. den lille by Standard Danish

DEF little town

'the small town'

(5) a. æ hele hus South/West Jutlandic

DEF whole house

b. hele hus-et Standard Danish

whole house-DEF

'the whole house'

In (3) to (5), South/West Jutlandic data is compared with their Standard Danish equivalents. (3) illustrates that in non-modified definite contexts, West Jutlandic uses a prenominal article, æ, while Standard Danish makes use of the suffixed article. In adjectival modification, however, both West Jutlandic and Danish resort to a further article, the freestanding preadjectival article den (4). This

distribution of the articles is the rule, so that it can be concluded that South/West Jutlandic æ actually is equivalent to the Standard Danish suffixed article¹³. In example (5), however, the adjective hele does not trigger the independent article, as would be expected from the data presented in (3) and (4). Instead, the suffixed article and its freestanding equivalent are used in both South/West Jutlandic and Standard Danish, that is æ and –et are triggered instead of det. The question arises why this is so. Hele 'whole' is different from e.g. lille 'little' in that it does not introduce a new discourse referent but modifies an existing one. This supports the hypothesis that the preadjectival article introduces a discourse referent that contains a new discourse variable. For further arguments in favour of this hypothesis and for a more detailed analysis and implications for the structure of the DP, see chapters 7 and 8.

Summarizing the preceding paragraphs, it can be said that the preadjectival article and the suffixed article developed from different sources. This is why it is likely that they entail different aspects of definiteness and have retained different semantics. The data from West Jutlandic supports this view, since regular patterns of definiteness and modification can be detected that seem to be chosen depending on the aspects of definiteness that need to be expressed. A question that still has not been addressed is why the Scandinavian languages developed a suffixed article at all and not a freestanding article, or two freestanding articles like Western Jutlandic.

According to Perridon (2002), the use of the suffixed article had spread to the whole of the Scandinavian language area by the first half of the 12^th century.

However, West and South Jutlandic developed a prefix and not a suffix, as discussed above. I follow Braunmüller (1982), Perridon (2002) and Stroh-Wollin (2009) in the assumption that the reason for the different realizations of definiteness is due to major word order changes within the NP. In earlier Scandinavian, demonstratives and other modifiers, such as adjectives, were placed postnominally. During the Viking Age (800-1000 AD), however, the word order within NPs changed and attributes came to be placed before the noun, or, perhaps the noun was no longer raised to first position. Whatever the structural process was, the result remains the same, namely the order adjective – noun. This change must have originated in Jutland. By comparing of runic inscriptions, it has been determined that the majority

of attributes (24 out of 28) was placed before the noun in Jutlandic but in only some of the rest of the Danish inscriptions. In Swedish inscriptions from the 11^th century, postposition of attributes seems still to be the rule. In the rest of Scandinavia, the change in the position of attributes must have occurred after noun plus (h)inn had turned into definite noun forms. Consequently, South/West Jutlandic has a prenominal article, because the word order change occurred before the article was suffixed, whereas in the rest of Scandinavia, the postnominal determiner was reinterpreted as a suffix before attributes were placed prenominally. Looking at definiteness in Scandinavian from this angle, there is nothing special at all about Standard Scandinavian employing a suffixed article. What is special, however, is that the Scandinavian languages seem to split the concept of definiteness into different morphemes, that is, different aspects of definiteness seem to be expressed by different realizations of D – irrespective of the fact whether one of the articles is a suffix or not. What I have to leave open here is why the different semantic contributions of the articles were not united in one morpheme but instead were split and expressed by more than one morpheme.

To sum up, the preadjectival article is a later development than the suffixed one, the use of definiteness markers to express the concept of definiteness has developed over a long time, and the question that is still open is why the Scandinavian languages opted for different morphemes.