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This paper examines the development of the periphrastic passive voice construction in Swedish between 1300 and 1750, from the point of view of constructional change. The development involves the rise of a new auxiliary, bliva ‘remain’, originally a lexical loan from Middle Low German, which after a period of variation replaces the older auxiliary varda ‘become’. The findings reveal that the origins of the periphrastic passive construction may be found in mutative constructions with varda and adjectival complements, and the same development is then found with the loanword bliva, delayed by some hundred years. The results of quantitative analysis place the turning point in the development between 1450 and 1550. The paper relates the variation and change in passive auxiliaries to Diachronic Construction Grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In line with the traditional pronouncement that the weak (definite) forms of adjectives in Germanic follow the definite determiner, the Gothic weak-only adjective sama 'the same' (no indefinite form *sams, with the strong inflection -s, occurs) is determined (sa sama 'the same') in the majority of its attestations. However, contrary to the traditional description, occasionally it also occurs on its own, without a determiner. An examination of the syntactic distribution of the adjective and a comparison of the Gothic translation of the Bible with the Greek and Latin texts uncover a double semantic nature of sama. Specifically, when determined, sama conveys a definite/particularising force of 'the same'. In the absence of the determiner, however, it conveys the semantic value of 'one; of one kind'. The results of this investigation contribute to our understanding of the conditions that govern the distribution of strong vs. weak adjective inflections in early Germanic. In particular, they confirm the contention that the occurrence of the weak form of the adjective is not simply a matter of whether or not a definite determiner precedes it. Instead, the definite value of the adjective inflection is realised cumulatively (periphrastically), via the co-occurrence of the definite determiner and the weak adjective inflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]