The Role of Adjectival Inflection in Scandinavian

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Adjectives in definite Scandinavian DPs trigger an additional lexical determiner (double definiteness). In many cases, one of the determiners is obsolete, and in some of these cases, different readings are obtained. The presence or absence of weak adjectival inflection can also yield different readings, i.e. inflection interacts with interpretation. For Scandinavian DPs, I propose that the notion of definiteness is made up of three aspects: inclusiveness, reference, and identity and that these components are expressed by the preadjectival article, the suffixed article, and the adjectival inflection respectively. 1 Basic data (double) definiteness Standard Swedish, Norwegian, and Faroese very much pattern alike with regard to double definiteness: (1) a. bil-en car-the ‘the car’ b. den ny-a bil-e