Search

In Modern Icelandic the verb líka ‘like’ occurs with a subject in the dative case and an object in the nominative case. It has been argued that this was also the case in Old Icelandic. In this paper we argue that in contrast to Modern Icelandic, the nominative argument of líka could also constitute the subject during the Old Icelandic period and the dative argument the object. More specifically, we maintain that the verb líka was an alternating (or symmetric) verb where the nominative and the dative argument could raise to the subject position, whereas in Modern Icelandic only the dative is able to raise to the subject position. In other words, we argue that a change in the argument structure of the verb has taken place such that líka has changed from being an alternating (symmetric) verb to an asymmetric oblique subject verb. The main argument that is used to substantiate this claim comes from control infinitives in Old Icelandic, taking on the form in (i): (i) girntiz meirr at líka einum guði en mönnum desired.mid more to PRO.nom like.inf alone.dat god.dat than men.dat ‘(He) desired more to please God alone than men.’ (Æv 150.15) Based on a generative analysis of syntactic structure, we present evidence that reveals that the dative argument functions syntactically as the object, in addition to discussing other potential evidence based on word order. When the nominative argument is the subject, the meaning of 'líka' is sometimes closer to that of English 'please' than 'like'. We also discuss how this might be accounted for.

The Reflexive Passive in Icelandic is reminiscent of the so-called New Passive (or New Impersonal) in that the oblique case of a passivized object NP is preserved. As is shown by recent surveys, however, speakers who accept the Reflexive Passive do not necessarily accept the New Passive, whereas conversely, speakers who accept the New Passive do also accept the Reflexive Passive. Based on these results we suggest that there is a hierarchy in the acceptance of passive sentences in Icelandic, termed the Passive Acceptability Hierarchy. The validity of this hierarchy is confirmed by our diachronic corpus study of open access digital library texts from Icelandic journals and newspapers dating from the 19th and 20th centuries (tímarit.is). Finally, we sketch an analysis of the Reflexive Passive, proposing that the different acceptability rates of the Reflexive and New Passives lie in the argument status of the object. Simplex reflexive pronouns are semantically dependent on the verbs which select them, and should therefore be analyzed as syntactic arguments only, and not as semantic arguments of these verbs.

We present an overview of an ongoing project which has the aim of developing methods for building a treebank of Icelandic. The treebank will contain both written and spoken language, and in addition have a diachronic dimension. Since Icelandic is an example of what has been called a less-resourced language when it comes to computational linguistics and language technology, it is essential to utilize the limited resources available as economically and efficiently as possible. We emphasize the importance of open source software and the interplay between linguistic knowledge and technological skills. We describe the workflow in the construction of the treebank and show how the different software tools work together towards the final representation. Finally, we show how the treebank can be used in studying some well known phenomena in Icelandic syntax.