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Implicit possessives and reflexive binding in Norwegian
Author(s) -
Lødrup Helge
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
transactions of the philological society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.333
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1467-968X
pISSN - 0079-1636
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-968x.2010.01235.x
Subject(s) - possessive , norwegian , noun , linguistics , proper noun , subject (documents) , noun phrase , reflexivity , computer science , philosophy , sociology , library science , social science
Norwegian allows implicit possessives with nouns in some cases when the subject is the understood possessor (e.g. Han vasket hendene ‘he washed hands.DEF’). The core group of nouns that allow this option is body‐part nouns, but it can be extended to nouns denoting objects in the ‘personal domain’. There are both syntactic and semantic restrictions on sentences with implicit possessives. These restrictions are discussed, and it is shown that the distribution of nouns with implicit possessives follows that of the local simple reflexive seg . An account is given which highlights the connection between reflexive binding and implicit possessives.