Unlike English, the Mainland Scandinavian languages have a complementizer som in embedded questions with a subject gap;
see the Swedish example in (1a) (and cf. Teleman et al. 1999/4: 555 ff.). This is sometimes referred to as "doubly filled
comp", following Chomsky & Lasnik (1977). The complementizer is also sometimes marginally possible in wh-clauses without
a subject gap; see (1b) and (1c). Teleman et al. (1999/4: 509, 511) refers to the possibility of som 'that' after relative
när 'when' or där 'there' as regional in Swedish. Also in Faroese,
the relative complementizer ið can sometimes occur after a wh-word, but it
is never obligatory (Thráinsson et al. 2004: 303f.).
(1)
a)
Hon
vet
inte
vem
*(som)
kommer
i dag.
(Swe.)
she
knows
not
who
*(that
comes
today
'She doesn't know who will come today.'
b)
Hon
vet
inte
när
(?som)
han
kommer.
(Swe.)
she
knows
not
when
(?that
he
comes
'She doesn't know when he comes.'
c)
Hon
vet
inte
vem
av
dem
(som)
han
har
bjudit.
(Swe.)
she
knows
not
who
of
them
(that
he
has
invited
'She doesn't know which of them she has invited.'
(Stroh-Wollin 2002: 17)
In Icelandic sem 'that' is not allowed in examples corresponding to (1) (Thráinsson 2007: 448 ff.).
However, the complementizer að 'that' often co-occurs with other complementizers in spoken Icelandic (Thráinsson 2007:449 f.),
and this is sometimes the case with at/att 'that' also in Mainland Scandinavian. In Icelandic,
að can follow the relative complementizer sem, as in (2).
(2)
Þetta
er
bókin
sem
(að)
ég
keypti.
(Ice.)
this
is
book.def
that
(that
I
bought
'This is the book that I bought.'
(Thráinsson 2007: 450)
The ScanDiaSyn survey included the following sentences to test the possibility of at/að/att
following another complementizer or wh-word:
(3)
a)
Hvis
at
du
kommer
på
besøg,
blir
vi
meget
glade.
(#367) (Da.)
if
that
you
com
on
visit
become
we
very
happy
'If you come to visit, we'd be very happy'
b)
Når
at
du
kommer,
skal
du
tage
aviser
med.
(#370) (Da.)
when
that
you
come
must.pres
you
take
newspapers
with
'When you come, you must bring newspapers.'
c)
Jon
spekulerede
på
om
at
han
kunne
komme
på
besøg.
(#368) (Da.)
Jon
wondered
on
wheter
he
could
come
on
visit
'Jon was wondering whether he could come visit.'
Sentences (#367) and (#370) was tested in Denmark and on Iceland, sentence (#368) only in Denmark.
The results from the Nordic Syntax Database (Lindstad et al. 2009) and the Nordic Dialect Corpus
(Johannessen et al. 2009) are presented below.
2 Results
2.1 Nordic Syntax Database
In Denmark, sentence (#367), with a conditional clause with the complementizer hvis/ef 'if' +
at/að 'that', is accepted only on Eastern Jutland; see Map 1. It receives a medium score in
Århus (also Eastern Jutland). On Iceland, on the other hand, the sentence is accepted in most locations; see Map 2.
It receives a medium score in a few locations in the north and in the southwest.
Map 1. Double complementizer in Danish: hvis 'if' + at 'that'
in conditional clause
(#367: Hvis at du kommer på besøg, blir vi meget glade. 'If you come to visit, we'd be very happy.')
(White = high score, grey = medium score, black = low score)
Map 2. Double complementizer in Icelandic: hvis 'if'' + að 'that'
in conditional clause
(#367: Hvis at du kommer på besøg, blir vi meget glade. 'If you come to visit, we'd be very happy.')
(White = high score, grey = medium score, black = low score)
Also sentence (#370), with når 'when' + at 'that',
is rejected in all locations in Denmark, except on Eastern Jutland where it receives a medium score; see Map 3. On Iceland, on the other hand, sentence (#370), is accepted in all locations, except in one location in the southwest,
where it receives a medium score; see Map 4.
Map 3. Double complementizer in Danish: når 'when' + at 'that' in a
temporal when-clause
(#370: Når du kommer, skal du tage aviser med. 'When you come, you must bring newspapers.')
(White = high score, grey = medium score, black = low score
Map 4. Double complementizer in Icelandic: þegar 'when' + að 'that'
in a temporal when-clause
(#370: Når du kommer, skal du tage aviser med. 'When you come, you must bring newspapers.')
(White = high score, grey = medium score, black = low score)
Sentence (#369), with an embedded question with om 'whether' + at 'that',
is rejected in all locations in Denmark; see Map 5.
Map 5. Double complementizer in Danish: om 'whether' + at 'that' in an
embedded question
(#368: Jon spekulerede på om at han kunne komme på besøg. 'Jon was wondering whether he could come visit.')
(White = high score, grey = medium score, black = low score)
2.2 Nordic Dialect Corpus
Examples with at following a complementizer or wh-word can be attested
in the NDC; a couple of examples are given in (4).
(4)
a)
og
det
var
jo
sjovt
for
at
når
vi
var
i
Salbrovad
(Da.)
and
that
was
prt
fun
because
when
that
we
were
in
Salbrovad
'and that was fun, because when we were in Salbrovad' (fyn3)
b)
så
flytter
de
over
når
at
de
har
taget
gymnasietiden
(Da.)
so
move
they
over
when
that
they
have
taken
high.school.time.def
'so they move over when they have finished high school' (bornholm3)
Examples with når 'when' + at 'that' can be attested in a few places
in Denmark (Als, Bornholm, Eastern Jutland, and Fyn) and in many parts of Norway; see Map 6.
There are no corresponding examples (with att 'that') from Swedish in the corpus.
Examples with hvis 'if' + at 'that' can only be attested in one location
in Denmark (Western Jutland) but are widespread in Norwegian; see Map 7 (and cf. Faarlund et a. 1997:1944).
Again, there are no clear examples from Swedish (with the complementizer om).
Map 6. Når 'when' + at 'that' in the Nordic Dialect Corpus.
Map 7. Hvis 'if' + at 'that' in the Nordic Dialect Corpus.
3 Discussion
3.1 Other data sources
In larger, written corpora, examples of att 'that' following a complementizer can be attested also
in Swedish. An example with eftersom 'since' + att is given in (5a);
examples like this are common in the spoken language. Also examples with
när 'when' + att occur; see (5b), but they are rare.
(5)
a)
Sen
börjar
jag
ny
klass
nästa
år
eftersom
att
då
läser
jag
bara
hotell.
(Swe.)
then
begin
I
new
class
next
year
since
that
then
read
I
only
hotel
'Then I will begin a new class next year, because then I only study hotel.'
b)
på
lunchen
när
att
hon
vaknat
(Swe.)
on
lunch.def
when
that
she
wake.sup
'At lunch, when she has woken up'
(Bloggmix)
In a few rare cases, när 'when' is instead followed by the relative complementizer
som, as in (6) (cf. also (1b) above).
(6)
Jag
vill
alltid
ha
dig
nära
när
som
åren
läggs
till
år.
(Swe.)
I
want
always
have
you
close
when
that
year.df.pl
add.pres.pass
to
year.pl
'I always want to have you close when the years are added to years.'
(Bloggmix)
In a corpus study of written Swedish, Kalm (2011: 25) notes that att sometimes occurs after e.g. fast 'although', ifall 'if', innan
'before', medan 'while' and som om 'as if'.
According to Kalm, examples seem to have become slightly more common in the end of the 20th century,
but they are still quite infrequent in the written language, and many examples are from reported speech or dialogue.
3.2 Theoretical issues relating to double complementizers
Double complementizers have been attested in several other European dialects
(see e.g. Poletto 2000 for Italian, Alber 2007 for Tyrolean and Barbiers et al. 2005, Boef 2012 for Dutch dialects),
and they have been used to argue for an analysis of the left-periphery with several positions
(see e.g. Rizzi 1997, Stroh-Wollin 2002 and many others). The fact that double complementizers are sometimes,
but not always, possible e.g. in Danish dialects can then point to differences between different clause-types.
It has been suggested that for Dutch, factivity (assertion) plays a role for the possibility of complementizer
doubling (see Barbiers 2002 and van Gelderen 2005). The results from the ScanDiaSyn survey do not point to any
such restrictions, at least not in Icelandic. We can also note that the Swedish example with
eftersom 'since' + att 'that' in (5a) has subject-verb inversion in
the embedded clause; embedded V2 has often been argued to be restricted to asserted complements. In Swedish
(unlike some Danish varieties), the complementizer need not be omitted in embedded V2-clauses (see Heycock 2006),
and, apparently, it can sometimes even be doubled. (See Bentzen 2014a for the distribution of embedded V2 in the
Scandinavian dialects.)
The difference between Icelandic and Danish observed in the survey might then relate to variation in the structure
of the left-periphery of the clause, and possibly to other differences related to embedded word order
(e.g. embedded V2 and stylistic fronting). It obviously also relates to differences in the properties of the
complementizers. While the complementizer að is often possible after another complementizer
(including sem), Icelandic does not allow the relative complementizer sem
to follow a wh-word. In Danish, at can follow som only when it is in
turn followed by the relative complementizer/expletive der 'there'; see (7).
(7)
den
fyr
som
at
*(der)
traf
henne
(Da.)
the
guy
that
that
*(there
met
her
'I always want to have you close when the years are added to years.'
(Stroh-Wollin 2002: 196)
The analysis of sem/som is much debated. Traditionally, it has been viewed as a
relative pronoun, but now it is often viewed as a complementizer (see e.g. Taraldsen 1986 and Stroh-Wollin 2002
for discussion and arguments against treating som as a relative pronoun). Holmberg (2000)
accounts for the requirement of som in subject relatives in Mainland Scandinavian by
assuming that it is a non-nominal expletive; his account does not immediately extend to other optional uses of
som, e.g. following när 'when'. Cf. also Platzack (2000) who
suggests that som contains different features in its relative and interrogative uses.
With respect to að/at/att, we can note that Swedish dialects do not generally allow
extraction of a subject from a that-clause with an overt att
(the so-called that-trace phenomenon; see Bentzen 2014b and references cited there),
whereas this is possible in many Norwegian dialects and in Icelandic (and e.g. Dutch). We can also note that Swedish
sometimes has som where Norwegian and Danish can or must use at;
see (8). Possible variation within the languages has not been investigated systematically, but Bergman (1942)
gives examples with att from Southern Sweden, where Standard Swedish
requires som.
(8)
a)
Det
är
i
Stockholm
som/*att
vi
brukar
träffas.
(Swe.)
it
is
in
Stockholm
that
we
use.pres
meet
'It is in Stockholm we usually meet.'
b)
Det
var
i
Oslo
at/*som
hun
studerte
jus.
(No.)
it
was
in
Oslo
that
she
studied
law
'It was in Oslo she studied law.'
c)
Det
er
i
København
at/*som
mødet
ska
finne
sted.
(Da.)
it
is
in
Copenhagen
that
meeting.def
shall
find
place
'It is in Copenhagen the meeting will take place.'
(cf. Stroh-Wollin 2002: 67)
References
Alber, Birgit. 2007. "Tyrolean A–Bar Movement: Doubling and Resumptive Pronoun Structures." In
Sjef Barbiers, Olaf Koeneman, Marika Lekakou & Margreet van der Ham (eds.), Microvariation in Syntactic Doubling,
Syntax and Semantics Volume 36: 141–170.
Barbiers, S., H. Bennis, G. De Vogelaer, M. Devos & M. van der Ham. 2005. Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch
Dialects, volume 1. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam.
Barbiers, Sjef. 2002. "Remnant stranding and the theory of movement." In Artemis Alexiadou,
Elena Anagnostopoulou & Hans-Martin Gärtner (eds.), Dimensions of Movement. From features to remnants, John Benjamins,
Philadelphia: 44–67.
Bentzen, Kristine. 2014b. "Subject and object extraction from embedded clauses."
Nordic Atlas of Language Structures (NALS). http://tekstlab.uio.no/nals#/chapter/52
Bergman, Gösta. 1942. "Sydliga provinsialismer I det bildade svenska talspråket."
Arkiv för nordisk filologi 66: 152–250.
Boef, Eefje. 2012. "Doubling in Dutch restrictive relative clauses: rethinking the Head External
Analysis." Proceedings of ConSole XIX: 125–149.
Chomsky, Noam & Howard Lasnik. 1977. "Filters and Control." Linguistic Inquiry 8: 425–504.
Faarlund, Jan Terje, Svein Lie and Kjell Ivar Vannebo. 1997. Norsk referansegrammatikk.
Universitetsforlaget, Oslo
Gelderen, Elly van. 2005. "The CP and split CP cross–linguistically." WORD 55.3: 369–403.
Hansen, Erik & Lars Heltoft. 2011. Grammatik over det Danske Sprog. Det Danske Sprog- och
Litteraturselskab.
Heycock, Caroline. 2006. "Embedded root phenomena." In Martin Everaert and Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.),
The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, vol. II. Blackwell, Oxford: 174–209.
Holmberg, Anders. 2000. "Scandinavian Stylistic Fronting: How Any Category Can Become an Expletive."
Linguistic Inquiry 31: 445–483.
Johannessen, Janne Bondi, Joel Priestley, Kristin Hagen, Tor A. Åfarli & Øystein A. Vangsnes.
2009. "The Nordic Dialect Corpus – an Advanced Research Tool." In Kristiina Jokinen and Eckhard Bick (eds.),
Proceedings of the 17th Nordic Conference of Computational Linguistics NODALIDA 2009, NEALT Proceedings Series Volume 4.
Kalm, Mikael. 2011. Underordning med och utan att. MA thesis, Uppsala Universitet.
Lindstad, Arne M., Anders Nøklestad, Janne Bondi Johannessen & Øystein A. Vangsnes. 2009. "The Nordic Dialect Database: Mapping Microsyntactic Variation in the Scandinavian Languages."
In Kristiina Jokinen and Eckhard Bick (eds.), Proceedings of the 17th Nordic Conference of Computational Linguistics
NODALIDA 2009. NEALT Proceedings Series Volume 4.
Platzack, Christer. 2000. "A Complement-of-N0 Account of
Restrictive and Non-Restrictive Relatives. The case of Swedish." In Artemis Alexiadou, Paul Law, André Meinunger &
Chris Wilder (eds.), The Syntax of Relative Clauses, John Benjamins, Amsterdam & Philadelphia: 265–308.
Poletto, Cecilia. 2000. The higher functional field: evidence from northern Italian dialects. Oxford
University Press, Oxford & New York.
Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. "The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery." In Liliane Haegeman (ed.), Elements
of Grammar, Kluwer, Dordrecht: 281–337.
Stroh-Wollin, Ulla. 2002. Som-satser med och utan som. PhD thesis, Uppsala Universitet.
Taraldsen, Knut Tarald. 1986. "Som and the Binding Theory." In Lars Hellan & Kirsti Koch
Christensen (eds.), Topics in Scandinavian Syntax, Reidel, Dordrecht: 149–184.
Teleman, Ulf, Staffan Hellberg & Erik Andersson. 1999. Svenska Akademiens grammatik 1–4.
Norstedts Ordbok, Stockholm.
Thráinsson, Höskuldur, Hjalmar P. Petersersen, Jógvan í Lon Jacobsen & Zakaris Svabo Hansen.
2004. Faroese. An Overview and Reference Grammar. Føroya Fróðskaparfelag, Tórshavn.
Thráinsson, Höskuldur. 2007. The Syntax of Icelandic. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
