Scandinavian Sentence-Types

Table of contents :
Frontmatter......Page 1
Contents......Page 5
1.1. The literal meaning......Page 6
1.2. Predicating sentence-types......Page 8
1.3. Non-predicating sentences......Page 12
1.4. The status of declaratives......Page 18
1.5. Other interactive elements......Page 19
2. Predicating types in Scandinavian......Page 23
2.1. Position of finite verb......Page 24
2.2. Temporal reference......Page 38
2.3 Full sentence form......Page 44
3.1. The meaning of ja......Page 47
3.2. Some other reactives......Page 59
4.1. A note on pronouns......Page 64
4.2. Sentence adverbials......Page 65
5.1. More on literal meaning......Page 79
5.2. ISA as amalgamations......Page 82
6.1. colloquial Swedish......Page 89
6.2. Pseudo-colloquial Norwegian......Page 97
7. Closing words......Page 103
8. References......Page 105

Citation preview

3-115 0538

SCANDIMAVIAN SENTENCE-TYPES STAFFAN HELLBERG

Det Kgl. Bibliotek - Aarhus

111

II II111111111111111 400029815168

INSTITUTIONEN FOR NORDISKA SPRAK

9.

GOTEBORGS UNIVERSITET MARCHJ 1985

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.. I

3-115 0538

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SPROGLf,BORATORIET A/.,HI lir, LJ~ll•/':11'::ITET ' J ,,_.?"/' , r I r. , ,1ng'.)a d 0I B ,;nine, f.,/, ir ,C ' r}'

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SCANDINAVIAN SENTENCE-TYPES STAFFAN HELLBERG )s

FARSK FORSK ISSN 0281-3114

SPROG LABORATORI ET AARHUS UNIVERSITET Bygning 327 , Ndr. Ringgade 8000 Arhus C Tlf. 06 - 13 67 11

SPROGU\BOFlATORIET M,m11r~ Ui !h/ER'.~ITET 8ygninu '::\c~7, r Jdr. ninggade 80UCJ J\, i 1u:; C

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_______

1

Contents

1. Basic sentence-types

2

1.1. The literal meaning

2

1.2. Predicating sentence-types

4

1.3. Non-predicating sentences

8

1.4. The status of declaratives

14

1.5. Other interactive elements

15

2. Predicating types in Scandinavian

19

2.1. Position of finite verb

20

2.2. Temporal reference

34

2.3. Full sentence form

40

3. Scandinavian reactives

43

3.1. The meaning o f ~

43

3.2. Some other reactives

55

4. Literally interactive words and phrases

60

4.1. A note on pronouns

60

4.2. Sentence adverbials

61

5. "Indirect speech acts"

75

5.1. More on literal meaning

75

5.2. ISA as amalgamations

78

6. Two Scandinavian dialogues

85

6.1. Colloquial Swedish

85

6.2. Pseudo-colloquial Norwegian

93

7. Closing words

99

8. References

101

2

1. Basic sentence-types Presenting three current views on the main topics in their reader, the editors of "Speech act theory and pragmatics" summarize: "In all three traditionssomething like a notion of literal meaning is essential''

(Searle, Kiefer & Bierwisch 1980: xi).

The choice of the term "literal" for what is also, in the same paragraph, called sentence meaning indicates that what is referred to is meaning as defined directly by the linguistic form of the sentence. The details and regularities of this linguistic form have not always been the focus of interest in speech act analysis. From a linguistic point of view, however, the relation between form and meaning is naturally a central issue. Most formal details in an ordinary sentence are related to its propositional content (in the sense of Searle 1969), but a few are not. Among the latter, we find details of sentence intonation and possibly, some of the lexical ite111.s. Most notably, we find grammatical mood and, particularly in some West European languages, some detaLls of word order. Formal differences of this kind

make up the basis for the classi-

fication of sentences into sentence-types. 1.1. The literal meaning Being related to meaning that is beyond propositional content, sentence-types have a fairly close relation to the use of sentences, and thus to speech act theory. They are not acts themselves, but "by selecting one rather than another of these alternatives, the speaker crucially influences the total act he is performing"

(Harder 1978: 196). What the formal indica-

3

tor of a sentence-type literally means is a matter for discussion. In the older literature, which generally confined the problem to the meaning of grammatical moods, these were often claimed to "express certain attitudes of the mind of the speaker towards the contents of the sentence"

(Jespersen 1924: 313). Recently, essentially

the same standpoint has been taken by Bierwisch, who, in an attempt to integrate basic sentence-types into the Searlian framework, suggests that "the semantic components that distinguish different sentence types are attitude specifiers in the sense that they determine the basic cognitive attitude in which a certain state of affairs is conceived" (Bierwisch 1980: 24). Incidentally, Searle's own term "illocutionary force indicator" is not very illuminating, since much of what he considers to contribute to illocutionary force is not reflected in the sentence-type.

(I take it to

be the accepted standpoint today that "performative verbs" belong to the propositional content of their sentences, e.g. that sentences with the predicate Eromise do not constitute an independent sentence-type, cf., e.g., Bach & Harnish 1982.)

To say that sentence-types are distinguished by attitude specifiers is, in a sense, to say that they are not distinguished by indicators for their designated position in the speech act pattern. It has been reasonably argued (e.g. by Wunderlich 1976 and Allwood 1976) that speech act theory in its Searlian guise is deficient, not paying heed to the interaction of speakers. This criticism does not, however, automatically affect the classification on formal grounds into sentence-types. In advancing his division of speech acts into initiative and reactive acts,

----------

~-------

Wunderlich (1976: 78) connects it only partly and indirectly with grammatical mood.

4

Both categorizations are, however, reflected in the formal differentiation of sentence-tl··pes. In the following, I will modify both Bierwisch's model and Wunderlich's and integrate them into one model. Thus, I argue that some sentence-types literally indicate an attitude, others are literally interactive, while a third category is both attitudinal and interactive. I also discuss a small residual category that is neither attitudinal nor interactive. I have worked the model out on and applied it to the present-day Scandinavian languages. The universal validity of the model is still sheer hypothesis; but the empirical foundations of most works on speech act theory are, as a matter of fact, limited to a few European languages. I do, however, occasionally point to differences between languages as regards distribution among the categories. 1.2. Predicating sentence-types I start with the sentence-types that are literally attitudinal but not interactive. First, it should be specified that it is towards the propositional content of the sentence that the attitude is taken (cf. Jespersen 1924:3l3) .~"'I'his specification·bsth tightens the model and stresses the point of literal meaning: not only is the attitude as such formally indicated, but it is directed towards a content that is literally expressed in the sentence. The following traditional sentence-types will then emerge: declarative: No. Hun leser 'Shets reading' jussive:

No. Korn!

'Come along!'

desiderative:No. Orn han enda kom! exclamatory: No. Athan t~r!

'If only he would come!'

'What a cheek!'

I think it is fairly obvious that different attitudes to the propositional content is expressed by the four

5

sentence-types, and I will not risk exact definitions. Roughly, the declarative type indicates an attitude of commitment to the truth of the proposition, the jussive an attitude of intention or attempt that the proposition should become true, the desiderative an attitude of desire for the truth of the proposition, and the exclamatory an emotional attitude to the presupposed truth of the proposition. The status of the desiderative as a sentence-type of its own is disputable: I will discuss the possibility that it \

should be replaced by a more general sentence-type characterized by the non-commitment to the truth of the proposition

below.

The interrogative sentence-type is missing in the survey, although it is obvious that, in the first place, yes-no questions form a sentence-type distinguished from the above-mentioned ones: interrogative: No. Kommer han? 'Is he coming?' However, it is characteristic for interrogatives that no attitude at all is taken to the propositional content, In particular, no attitude is taken to the truth-value of the proposition, whereas in the rough definitions of the other sentence-types, truth-value is always involved. Instead, the speaker "invites others to commit themselves"

(Harder 1978:

196). Thus, the interrogative belongs to the literally interactive sentence-types. Among these, it is classed as initiative, being the former member of an adjacency pair. It may be worth noting that not only is commitment to the plain truth-value left to the addressee,- but the attitude taken to it through modal verbs expressing possibility, necessity etc. is left to him as well. Thus, the possibility expressed by the modal in No. Kan han g~re det? 'Can he do it?' is the possibility as judged by the addressee. This goes even for deontic modals, thus in No. Kan jeg komme inn? 'May I

-'

6

come in?', it is the addressee's judgement that is at stake, although the possible obstacles are presumably of a social nature. This does not necessarily mean that the addressee is entitled to decide who is permitted to enter; but the modal refers to his judgement of whether it is permitted. Incidentally, this is an indication that the bipartition into epistemic and deontic modality may be less fundamental in linguistics than in logic (cf. the notion of functional modality suggested in Abelin, Gadelii

&

Lof-

strom 1981). Presumably, wh-questions, as in No. Hvem kommer? 'Who is coming?', should count as a subgroup among interrogatives, but I would LLke to mention another possible analysis. Wh-questions are generally assumed to introduce the presuppositions obtained by replacing the wh-word with the appropriate existentially quantified variable (cf. Levinson 1983: 184 and the literature cited there). Thus, for instance, Hvem kommer? presupposes that someone is coming. This kind of presupposition is somewhat odd in that it is not invariant to negation. Now, it seems possible to regard this so-called presupposition as a commitment to the truth of the proposition as far as it is specified in the sentence. Wh-questions might then be analyzed as both attitudinal and interactive. I will, however, leave this as a suggestion. There are a couple of reasons for which I do not regard the jussive sentence-type as literally initiative, although Wunderlich treats it as on a par with the interrogative in this respect (1976: 77-78). First, the act of compliance which is supposed to be the reactive move initiated by the jussive sentence is typically non-verbal. If the theory is to be reasonably constrained, a sentence should be classed as formally interactive only if it basically interacts with another sentence. Second, and perhaps more im-

7

portant, the act of compliance need not be expected to occur instantly, no true adjacency fair thus being established. An utterance such as Sw. Halsa alla mina gamla vanner ! 'Give my best regards to all my old friends!' directed to a friend leaving for America will normally expect its compliance to be spread out over the next few weeks. Further: neither is an utterance such as Sw. Korn med det samma!

'Come

right away!' tautological, nor an utterance such as Sw. Korn lite senare!

'Come in a while!' deviant.

There is no parallel possibility to express - within the sentence structure ... the delay with which a question is expected to be answered. Rather, the answer to an oral question is generally expected to be immediate; delays should be motivated (cf. Levinson 1983: 306 and the literature cited there). The sentence-types discussed so far have one thing in common, namely a propositional content expressed in a subject-predicate structure. Formally, they make up the class of Eredicating sentence-types (the term being connected to the notion of predication in Searle 1969). They do cover the vast majority of different sentences in the language, but they do not exhaust them, as we shall see presently. There are interesting constraints on the meaning of predicating sentence-types, in particular if the alternative analysis of wh-questions is rejected. They must be either attitudinal or interactive, but they cannot be both at the same time. The first constraint, that they cannot avoid being either attitudinal or interactive, can be seen as a re-formulation of Searle's statement (1969: 29) that you cannot utter a proposition (carry out a propositional ~et) without doing an illocutionary act. The second constraint, if it holds, makes some sense if it is reshaped as .a

constraint that, roughly,

you cannot mean or indicate more than one proposition and one attitude at a time. I have no particular difficulties in treating jussives as sentences with deleted subjects, thus attributing

8

to them a full subject-predicate structure. It is, however, also possible to regard the finite verb alone as constitutive for predicating sentences: this will leave us with fewer

deviant sentences.

Still, ellipsis must be counted as a frequent device in ordinary spoken language. It is obvious that, e.g., Sw. Boken!

'The book!' may indicate the same atti-

tude as a full jussive sentence, or Boken, with falling intonation, the same attitude as a full declarative sentence (e.g. as an answer to a question). Likewise, Boken?, with rising intonation, may be initiative in the same fashion as a full interrogative. I will claim that it is always possible to analyze such sentences as ellipses of the corresponding predicating sentence-type. This does not mean that there will always be unique lexical candidates to fill in the subject and predicate slots. Nor is the deleted syntactic structure always uniquely recoverable; in a few cases, there may even be difficulties in avoiding ungrammaticality when spelling out the full syntactic structure. It will, however, always be possible to give a rough idea of the propositional content of the sentence and a gross indication of its syntactic representation. The case for ellipsis is easier to argue if we turn to case languages, where differences in full structure may have overt morphological reflexes. Pointing to a bun in an Icelandic bakery and uttering Icel. bollu 'bun (oblique case)' will (clearly, albeit not very politely) mean 'I want a bun', whereas uttering bolla 'bun (nominative case)' in the same situation will rather (somewhat misplacedly) mean 'That's a bun'. 1.3. Non-predicating sentences There are, however, sentences that cannot reasonably be brought back to subject-predicate structures. Typi-

9

cally, they consist of one single word. Here, we find vocatives, e.g. of personal names: Ester! We find interjections, including words for 'yes' and 'no': Da.No.Sw. ~ 'yes (affirmative)', Da. No.Sw.

12

'yes (objective)', Da. nej, ncE, Sw. na,

nej, No. nei 'no'. There are greetings; there are also some formulas, such as the magic spell, Da. abracadabra!, No.Sw. abrakadabra! To treat such sentences as ellipses seems utterly deceptive. Various predications could be suggested as lurking behind a vocative like Ester!, but it is hard to find arguments for binding them to a deleted syntactic structure. Turning to case languages again, we find in some of them, e.g. Latin, the vocative case directly refusing integration into a subject-predicate structure. In other languages as well, an attempt to reconcile the vocative with a subject-predicate structure clashes with the demand that the referent in question should be referred to with a second person pronoun. On the other hand, there is a long tradition that units of these kinds should be considered separate sentences (cf., e.g., Beckman 1916: 201). It should perhaps be mentioned that they often form utterances in combination with predi'catihg sentences. An utterance such as Sw. Ja, jag kommer 'Yes, I'm coming' is thus analyzed as two sentences. Examples with vocatives are: Sw. Ester, hor du .mig? 'Esther, do you hear me?', and Hor du mig, Ester? 'Do you hear me, Esther?' Two non-predicating sentences may also be combined: (Da.No.) Sw. Ja, Ester!

'Yes, Esther! '

A non-predicating sen-

tence may even be inserted into a predicating one: Sw. Nu, Ester, ska vi aka 'Let's get going now, Esther'. I do not think this possibility of conflated sentences poses any problems for the model. Cf. the traditional graphic convention of surrounding a vocative by commas. It may be worth noting that if a second person pronoun occurs in the surrounding sentence, the vocative need not be placed adjacent to it:

10 sw. Jag har, Ester, alltid alskat dig sa hogt 'I have, Esther, always loved you so'. On the other hand, a true apposition must follow its head: Sw. Jag, Ake Mjuk, har alltid alskat dig 'I, Ake Mjuk, have always loved you'. Most of the non-predicating sentences are formally interactive. Having little or no propositional content of their own, it is not surprising that they should have their literal functions in the interaction with other sentences. There is one group whose members are only interactive and do not express an attitude. They thus have various functions as conversation regulators. The above-mentioned vocatives, the basic meaning of which is to pick out the addressee(s) among the hearers (Clark

&

Carlson 1982:343),

or the like, are typical. Note that this meaning whichithus do not try to define exactly - is their sentence meaning, as distinguished from their word meanings. Vocative sentences are typically made up of a proper name or a noun. Such lexical items may, of course, occur in predicating sentences as well, influencing their sentence meanings. In their basic meaning, vocatives are vague as to being initiative or reactive. True, in making up the whole of an utterance, they are normally interpreted as being initiative. But consider, e.g., admonitions to pupils at school, which may take the form of a single vocative and which are reactive to (verbal or non-verbal) acts. Furthermore, together with a reactive such a s ~ ' vocatives are frequently found in reactive utterances: Ja, Ester! Such vocatives do not literally indicate a continuation of the conversation. Finally, as is well known, a vocative may be freely combined with all sorts of sentences (and even inserted into them, as mentioned above). The same vagueness seems to be typical of other non-attitudinal conversation regulators. An example is Da.No. hallo!, sw. halla!

'hello', used not only

11 as an attention caller by the first speaker but also as a response by the second speaker (cf. the analysis of the first hello in telephone as a reaction to the summons, Levinson 1983: 311). There are, however, also non-attitudinal units that are literally reactive because they mean apprehension or non-apprehension of a previous utterance. Da. na, No. javel, Sw. jasa, jaha all mean apprehension. Da. hva'?, No. hva?, Sw. va?, and others mean non-apprehension. The latter category, being interrogative, is both reactive and initiative. This should not be confused with vagueness. The meaning of apprehension is focussed on by Allwood (1976: 226) in his brief discussion of acknowledge-

~§:!!:!:§· Using this term, Allwood indicates "the various ways in which a receiver can indicate his apprehension, understanding or acceptance of information he has received. - - - Yes, umhuh, mm are common such acknowledgers /in English/, connected with apprehension, understanding or even acceptance." With his formulations, Allwood indicates that the examples given may not be neutral acknowledgers but mean an attitude as well. When outlining the function of a few other English acknowledgers, he explicitly mentions their indication of attitudes: "Oh indicates surprise in addition to apprehension and understanding, O.K. indicates additional agreement and thanks indicates additional gratefulness /sic/." Below,

--r

will conclude that it is no coincidence that a clearly neutral acknowledger is missing from his list. The quotation from Allwood brings us to those non-predicating sentences which are both attitudinal and interactive. Most interjections belong to this category. For instance, the basic meaning of a!, I will claim, is an emotional attitude to the propositional content of a previous sentence. The basic meaning of ~

is an attitude of commitment to the truth of a

previous proposition. The typical combination is thus

I

•

12 reactive-attitudinal. It is not so surprising that the attitude in question should be taken towards a proposition that has been mentioned rather than towards one that is to be mentioned. I have not found any clear instances of attitudinal and initiative units. One possible candidate is Da. vffirsg0, No. vffirsagod,

Sw. varsagod, indicating an offer. Although

there is a rather firm connection with the reactive Da. tak, No. takk, Sw. tack 'thanks', forming an adjacency pair, the interaction with non-verbal acts complicates the picture. Furthermore, at least in varieties of Norwegian and Swedish, Vffirsagod, varsagod, may occur in a reactive function. The residue of non-attitudinal, non-interactive sentences can be illustrated by the magic spell, Da. abracadabra, No.Sw. abrakadabra. The whole class of speech acts that Searle (1976: 13) calls declarations could be candidates for this category. However, it so happens in our culture that most declarations take the form of declarative, predicating sentences, i.e. they are literally attitudinal. Thus, if a professor finishes an oral exam with the utterance, sw. Du ar godkand 'You've passed', the sentence-type literally means a commitment to the truth of the proposition. The literal meaning remains vague as to on what grounds the speaker can make his commitment, e.g. whether he considers the very utterance of the sentence to be a necessary or sufficient ground for its truth. Thus, the category of non-attitudinal, non-interactive sentences seems to be small in Scandinavian languages. I have wondered ..whether greetings, such as Da. dav, No. morn, Sw. hej, might possibly belong to the category. They regularly form adjacency pairs in conversation, but this does not necessarily make them literally interactive. I am not sure, for instance, that the first greeting literally means that the second greeting is being elicited, in the same way as an

13 interrogative sentence means that an answer is expected. Greetings have something of the same self-contained flavour as magic spells and other declarations. I will leave the classification of greetings in this unsettled state. It goes without saying that some of the non-predicating sentences have, historically, arisen out of elliptical versions of predicating sentences. For instance, the Danish greeting dav, as well as its more formal variant goddag, has arisen from a sentence roughly corresponding to 'I wish you a good day'. However, this syntactic frame disappeared long ago and is not part of today's competence (except as rather widespread etymological knowledge). Of course, there are borderline cases where the possibility of synchronic ellipsis could be discussed. Sometimes, formal properties make such ellipsis improbable. For instance, Sw va? can be traced back to an elliptical version of a sentence roughly corresponding to present-day Sw. Vad sa du? 'What did you say?'; however, the difference between the short, stressed vowel of va? and the long, stressed or short, unstressed vowel of the etymologically identical wh-word vad? 'what' (with optional mute

Q)

makes the synchronic ellipsis

improbable. Similarly, there is a difference in vowel quality between Da. hva'? [va] meaning non-apprehension and Da. hvad? [vce] 'what' as a wh-word. On the other hand, as there is no such formal difference in Norwegian between hva? as constituting a whole sentence and hva? 'what' as starting a full sentence, the possibility of synchronic ellipsis increases. It could be mentioned in passing that the phonetic development of Sw. va? still seems to be in progress: in the speech of many young people, ha? seems to be the normal form. As we shall see, the dynamism in ellipsis is more interesting within the class of predicating sentences, as elliptical declaratives may develop into non-elliptical, non-declarative sentences.

14

1.4. The status of declaratives Bierwisch (1980: 23) argues convincingly that "declarative sentences are basic or neutral as opposed to other sentence types and that their assertive interpretation is the neutral or unmarked case". This is in harmony with traditional views. Chomsky observed long ago (1957: 80) that when he found that the kernel of English grammar consisted of simple, declarative, active sentences, this corroborated the traditional practice of grammarians,

who always started

their descriptions with simple declaratives. I interpret Bierwisch's analysis as a fundamental bipartition of the predicating sentence-types into the declarative type on one hand, and the other, non-declar.ati ve, "marked" types on the other. Further, I claim that a declarative sentence always - not only normally - has the literal meaning of commitment to a truth value. Thus, the normal way of doing things with words is to commit oneself to truth values. The kind of speech acts which Searle (1976: 11) calls commissives illustrates this. The point of a commissive, e.g. a promise, is to commit the speaker to some future course of action. It seems obvious that the "direction of fit" is world-to-words. However, we render this in a words-to-world garment, that is, what the speaker literally does is to commit himself to the truth of a description of some future state of affairs. Thus, the sentence No. Jeg vil

ga straks

'I will leave soon' is normally interpreted as a commissive, but it is a literal declarative of the same type as, e.g., No. Han vil

ga straks 'He will

leave soon' . These claims are at variance with claims that the declarative sentence-type should be neutral in its meaning (e.g. Wunderlich 1976: 136). Rather, it should, following Bierwisch (1980: 20), be pointed out that the basic cognitive attitude indicated by a declarative sentence should not be equated with

15 its (full) illucutionary force. The "unmarked" status of the declarative sentence-type can be seen in the relative absence of formal restrictions on it, as compared, in particular, to the restrictions on the jussive sentence-type: that the (underlying) subject should be in the second person or possibly in the inclusive first person plural, that a number of verbs, including modals, are excluded, that there is no tense flexion etc. On the other hand, it is only the declarative sentence-type that allows the full range of sentence modifiers, modifying or commenting upon the truth-value.

(I will briefly discuss this group of

words or phrases below, with its different labels and sub-labels, such as conjunctional adverbs and modal particles.)

1.5. Other interactive elements In sentences that are not formally interactive by sentence-type, e.g. declaratives, there are often formally interactive elements on the level of individu,:11 words or phrases, such as conjunctions, conjunctional adverbs, and many instances of anaphoric pronouns and verbs. Thus, a sentence such as Sw. Det gor den 'It does/is' consists of three anaphoric words and is practically void of meaning in isolation. It has, however, a predicating structure of its own, and the attitude is taken to this predication. Hence, the sentence as such is not literally interactive. It is readily seen that the language often offers a choice as to how to indicate the interaction. Det gor den kan be used as an answer to a question Sw. Kommer bussen? 'Is the bus coming?', whereby the interaction is formally indicated on the constituent level. It can also be brought up to the sentence level, by the answer: Ja!

'Yes!' As a matter

of fact, Scandinavian conventions favour a combination of these variants, thus, Sw. Ja, det gor den 'Yes, it is'. This two-sentence-utterance is tauto-

.-~-.~-·"-

- - -----

16

logical, but the tautology functions to relieve the burden of inference from the listener. The first sentence is a direct account of the reactive status of the utterance, the second one is at least a less indirect account of its propositional content. However, an attempt to render this content more directly will result in less natural variants. Thus, sw. Ja, bussen kommer 'Yes, the bus is coming' will in most cases give a pedantic or impertinent impress·ion. The non-neutrality of the last-mentioned type is attested by the constant difficulties experienced by foreign languages teachers trying to elicit answers of the type Ja, bussen kommer from pupils in conversation exercises. In this connection, one difference among Scandinavian languages can be mentioned. (In general, I am assuming, and demonstrating, the similar nature and common development of the sentence typology of the Scandinavian languages.) The conventionally favoured variant sw. J,:!..!.. det gor den, as an answer, shows inverted word order with the object preposed, thus the order object - verb - subject. Norwegian seems to have the same convention as Swedish, thus No. Ja, det gj~r de!! is the favoured answer to No. Kommer bussen? Danish, on the other hand, has no "object constraint" (demand for an overt object) in these cases, and the conventionally favoured answer is (as in English) subject - verb: Da. Ja, den g~r. The equivalent to the Norwegian-Swedish variant is not ungrammatical in Danish but is apprehended as non-neutral: Da. ~a, det g~r den. Therefore, it is . me special, often impertinent, interpretag1ven so . I Swedish and Norwegian, the same impertinent t1on. n t tion can be given to their non-neutral . interpre a ·z the order subJect . .. - verb - object: variant, vi · sw. Ja, den gOr d');!, No. Ja, den gj~r det. This order trongly marked in Swedish than in Normay be mores The variant subject - verb - object is appreatical in Danish in these cases. wegian. amm bended as ungr

17 The choice of formal interaction on the sentence level does not stand open for all languages to the same extent as for the Scandinavian ones. The lexical register of interactive units varies in scope from language to language. It is., for instance, a well-known fact that a number of languages have no equivalents to English~' Scand. ~ ' or English no, Scand. nej etc.: Irish and classical Latin are two instances of which I am aware. For instance, the neutral affirmative answer to Latin Solusne venisti? 'Did you come alone?' is Solus 'Alone'. Thus, the possibility of formally expressing a reactive move is more restricted in Latin than in English or the Scandinavian languages. In this example, Latin has to choose a declarative sentence-type. As we can see, not even anaphoric words occur, so there are no formal indicators of interaction at all. True, the declarative is elliptical, and the elliptical structure can be re-established only with the aid of the preceding question; but I hesitate to call the absence of an element a formal indicator. Be this as it may, the case is a good illustration of the difference between function (or illocutionary force, perhaps) and literal meaning. I think it is fair to claim that in the Norwegian equivalent Korn du alene? - Ja 'Did you come alone? - Yes', the~ of the second utterance has the same function as solus in the Latin example. But it is hard to argue that solus ~~~~§ 'yes' or that~ means 'alone'. The ground is now laid for a somewhat more detailed discussion of Scandinavian sentence-types. In the next section, I treat the formal properties of predicating sentence-types. I find that current developments make the topic particularly interesting. In the third section, I discuss the non-predicating sentences, in particular the reactive ones. Most of the section is devoted to an investigation of the basic e central reactive~- The fourth secmeaning Of th

18 tion briefly treats the problem of which individual words and phrases are literally interactive, and what kinds of units they interact with. The fifth section takes up the problem with what is traditionally called "indirect speech acts" and how these are to be reconciled with the notion of literal meaning of sentence types. Finally, I relate my results to two dialogical specimens, one of Swedish and one of Norwegian.

........... ::,:.::.:.::.::::.:.:..-····-

))

·-----··-·----- :-

~--·:-:_ ___ - __ ..

- ·-.-.~--~···--~--.

-~-------- ....

20

There are not many lexical items that are literal indicators of sentence-type. Some possible candidates are mentioned in the following, such as wh-words (indicating interrogatives), Da.No. gid (indicating desideratives), Da.No. at, Sw. att (indicating exclamatories).

2.1. Position of finite verb In Scandinavian declarative sentences, the second constituent is always the finite verb. This is a time-tried observation, nowadays often associated with the system elaborated by Poul Diderichsen (1941: 37, 1957: 191). As an illustration, some of his Danish examples can be quoted (1957: 162): Da. Sa har han vist glemt galocherne her 1Then he must have forgotten his galoshes here' Da. onkel og Tante har vel glemt galocherne i distraktion 'My uncle and aunt must have forgotten their galoshes in the general confusion' pa. Galocherne har Onkel Peter vist glemt forleden 1uncle Peter must have forgotten his galoshes the other day'· Da. fler har du nreppe glemt galocherne 1y0 u couldn 1t very well have forgotten your gi:1).oshes here' This is traditionally presented as the word order of main clauses, subordinate clauses showing a different word order. However, many subordinate clauses show the given word order, with (among other things) the second position reserved for the finite verb. Larsrsson (1975: 22) has demonstrated that Gunnar Ande inate clauses are characterized by being these su bord . s Thus, al though ·this word order is optioasser t 1.on · . serted subordinate clauses, there is a tennal 1.n as · ·t to be associated with the sentence-type 1. dency f or ' . d clarative one, rather than with the synv1..z. the e tactic clause type.

·-----

.

'. . . __:·: .:.., ·-.:~-7":~•.:.:.~.:::.:::..:;..:...;;..: ... -~ .,

.

----

_...... ~--·--------····----------·--

--~--- --·-···-··-···-·.

21 It is likewise an old observation that in jussive sentences, as well as in yes-no interrogatives, the finite verb occupies the first position, and Diderichsen (1957: 191) points out the efficiency of this difference as an early indication of the sentence-type. Again, a few of his examples may be quoted (1957: 162): Da. Glem ikke hvad jeg sagde! 'Don't

forget what I said!'

Da. Sid (du) ikke og sov! 'Don't just sit there daydreaming!' Da. Har Peter glemt galocherne og tabt paraplyen uden at sige det? 'Has Peter. forgotten his galoshes, and dropped the umbrella without telling me?' Diderichsen (1957: 193) also points out the fact that the older ability in these languages to begin a declarative sentence

that was narrative continuation, with

a finite verb, is now obsolete. The word order diffe~~ce among the sentence-types is thus becoming stricter. The picture is somewhat blurred by the ability of some sentence adverbs to be preposed before an imperative (Lie 1976: 35), although as these adverbs cannot occupy the first position of a declarative, the efficiency of the signal is saved: No. Ikke kj95r! No. Bare ga!

' Don ' t drive ! '

'Just go!'

The possibility of preposing the negation is confined to Norwegian, while that of preposing bare (Da. bare, sw. bara)

'only' occurs in Danish and Swedish as well.

Here, I pursue the case for the position of the finite verb as a formal differentiator among the sentence-types. I do not claim that there is a full-fledged system, but that there is a growing tendency in the present-day Scandinavian languages to make the position of the finite crucial. In particular, I claim that this criterion singles out the declarative sentencetype, with the finite in the second position, from

22

non-declarative sentence-types, with the finite often occurring in other

positions (first or third/fourth).

The crucial cases are the remaining sentence-types, the desiderative and the exclamatory. Of old, the desiderative was formally indicated by a grammatical mood, the present subjunctive, sometimes called optative. This form has shown a strong tendency to occupy the first position: Da. Leve dronningen! 'Long live the Queen!' No. K6mme ditt rike! 'Thy kingdom come!' Sw. Vare darmed hur som helst! 'Be this as it may!' Outside fixed phrases - such as those in the three examples - the optative is not much used in present-day /

Sc~ndinavian, and with its disappearance, much of the tendency towards first position has disappeared. There is a residual use of initial No.Sw. matte 'may', which seems, also synchronically, to function as a finite

verb, although it is unclear which form it is: Sw. Matte han fa leva annu i manga ar! 'May he live for many more years!' Wishes are instead expressed in sentences of the follow±ng kind: Da. Bare han dog ville komme! 'If only he would come!' Da. Hvis jeg blot kunne hjc1=lpe! 'If only I could be of help!' No. Orn jeg enda hadde reist den gangen! 'If only I had gone that time!' sw. Bara han kommer nan gang! 'I do wish he would come' Sw. Orn det bara inte hade varit sa hett den dagen! 'If the weather had just not been so hot that day'

23

Historically, these are subordinate conditional clauses, and they still show the formal characteristics of such clauses in word order and initial cornplernentizer (_2!!!, hvis, bare/bar a) . Erik Andersson (1982: 7 2) has, however, objected to the traditional classification of such sentences as elliptical, with a deleted main clause. He argues that the only reason for assuming ellipsis is the structural identity with subordinate clauses. His claim is that a sentence gets a subordinate clause structure if it "has lost its illocutionary force". Parallels are echo-questions such as:

SW.

-

Ar du trott?

'Are you tired? Sw.

-

-

Orn jag ar trott?

-

How can you ask?'

Vad har du gjort?

'What have you done?

-

Vad jag har gjort?

-

What have I done?'

where the echo is not intended to include the illocutionary force of the question. To say that wishes lack illocutionary force seems misleading (also apart fro!!'.

;t:h~ confusion of (expressions of) "·basic cognitive attitude and illocutionary force); but what Andersson means is that they are not used to transfer over or ask for new information. That is, they are not declaratives or interrogatives. Erik Andersson's argument includes exclarnatories of the following kind:

sw.

Att du inte skarns! 'You should be ashamed!'

They, too, have counterparts in Danish and Norwegian, although the Danish variant is somewhat obsolete (demanding an initial tcenk , cf. below) : Da. At du kan spprge sa naivt! 'What a naive question!' No. At du ikke ville kornme til oss! 'How could you not want to come?' Here, as well, the word order and the initial cornplementizer (att, at 'that') show their historical origin as subordinate clauses. Andersson's conclusion is that

~-···-~····

24

there is a difference between direct declaratives, interrogatives, and jussives, all taking main clause word order, and other sentences, including wishes and exclamations, often taking subclause word order even as not synlactLcally or semantically subordinated to another c:lause (Andersson 1982: 76). I agree with l1im in associa:ing the word order difference with illocutionary force, although I would rather talk of "basic cogni ti ,,e attitude"

(being one of the factors

determining illocutionary force). However, I would like to deviate or extrapolate from his analysis in two respects. ?irst, I interpret the establishment of such desiderative and exclamatory sentences as connected with the general tendeny to avoid the second position for the finite verb in non-declarative sentences. Second, the formal description of the structure of the se~tences as subclause word order is not consistent witi all types and is thus not generally valid.

If the initial complementizer does not count as occupying a position, the fact that the finite verb takes the third position in such desiderative and exclamatory sentences comes out clearly only when the second, adverbial position is filled. Now, it is a remarkable fact that this position is very often filled in these sentences (Da. endda, No. enda, Sw. anda 'though',

-

Da.No. ikke,

sw.

inte -

'not' etc.). In particular, there

is a frequent occurrence of such adverbs as Da.No. ~ ' Sw. ~ 'only', Da. blot 'only', Da. dog 'anyway', although the contrast that these words literally indicates remains ~ery much unspecified. The most important function of the words seems to be to make the (no~-declarative) wor~ order evident. There is also another type of desiderative sentences, with its origin in a noun phrase qualified by a relative clause: Da. Hvem der blot kunne kornme ud at rejse!

'If only I could take a trip!'

25 Sw. Den som vore hemma igen! 'If only I were home again!' Again, the late position of the finite verb is characteristic. Possibly, the (historical) relative (der, som) already countsas:occupying the second position, but in any case, as is seen from the Danish example, the adverbial position is earlier than that of the finite verb. In the examples so far, there is nothing that formally excludes the possibility of a synchronic ellipsis. Although I agree with Erik Andersson that the elliptical analysis is misleading, there is some reason to believe that there is a synchronic relation between these full sentences and identically structured subordinate clauses. There are, however, structures which cannot even formally be supplied by a deleted main clause. As Diderichsen (1957: 216) points out, desideratives headed with (Da.No.) 9id belong to this group: / Da. Gid det ma ga ham godt i livet! 'May his life be a good one!' No. Gid du aldri matte angre pa dette! 'May you never regret this!' The Norwegian example shows that the finite verb does not take the true second position. Let us next consider exclamatories originating in relative clauses with correlates: Da. Sikken sjover han er! 'What a bastard he is!' No. Sa star du er blitt! 'How you have grown!' Sw. Vilka ansprak han har! 'What demands he makes!' It is 'obvious that the finite verb does not occupy the second position. It is still formally possible to assume an ellipsis and re-establish a main clause (Sw. Har du h8rt vilka ansprak han har!

[Have you heard

what demands he makes?'), although it is far-fetched,

-

·-,-

-

-

-

··--

'"-'-~---·.. - ____ · - - - - - - - - - - - ,....--··

_,,- ~--,---.~ ·.~· -

.--

..._'_

..·="f--.r

-

26

particularly in cases such as Sw. Och pappa som hade skakat honom sa hart! so hard!'

'And after Father had shaken him

However, the development in colloquial Scandinavian has taken one step further. Exclamatories of the following kind are current: Da. Dejlig stue I har! 'Nice sitting-room, this is!' No.Sw. Fin bil du har! 'Nice car, this is!' There is no adjectival pronoun heading the initial noun phrase. Thus, the elliptical analysis is hardly possible even formally, and the sole difference from declaratives is the word order. Cf.· the following declaratives with preposed object: Da. Dejlig stue har I 'And you've got a nice sitting-room' No.Sw. Fin bil har du 'And you've got a nice car' Obviously, the illocutionary point of such utterances may well be to express an evaluation. But there is a literal commitment to the truth of the proposition, while in sentences such as Fin bil du har, the truth is literally presupposed. There are still restrictions on the type Fin bil du har, and it is of course difficult to judge whether it will be generalized. Thus, it seems to demand a structure adjective+ noun in its initial phrase. However, to me a sentence like the following ·is also marginally possible: sw. Envis du ar! 'You're stubborn, you are!' Further, we have non-declarative sentences starting with Da. tcenk,

No. tenk, Sw. tank, for instance

excl~atories: No. Tenk at du er en sann liten smapike enna! 'Fancy your

still being such a little girl!'

27

Sw. Tank att dom bara satt dar och skrattade! ~Fancy their just sitting there laughing!' sw. Tank som han har andrat sig mot dig! 'It's amazing, how his attitude toward you has changed! ' The initial word, tenk etc., is normally the imperative form of the verb for 'think', tenke etc., but in

this function, it has more or less developed into

an interjection. This can be gathered from the fact that other forms of the verb cannot govern clauses like the above-mentioned. Sw. Jag tanker att dom bara satt dar och skrattade is only possible with a specialized meaning of tanka ('I guess that •. '), while *Jag tanker som han har andrat sig mot dig is ungrammatical. On the other hand, tenk etc. is intuitively /f~lt to be more closely related to the following /

sentence than other interjections. This intuition is corroborated by the fact that declarative sentences preceded by tenk etc. can also be introduced by a complem~ntizer: Sw. Nej, tank att det har han inte! 'No he hasn't - fancy that!' Thus, again, only word order distinguishes declarative sentences from exclamatory sentences. The elliptical analysis seems hard to defend for either of them. I take basic meaning of tenk etc. :t.o be, roughly, that the following sentence is in some respect unexpected (primarily in relation to the preceding sentence). Thus, the occurrence of tenk etc. seems to exclude the possibility of a deleted main clause with a similar content ('Isn't it curious that .. ' etc.). In Danish, there is even a tendency for trenk to develop

into a formal indicator of non-declarative

sentence-type, as it is obligatorily preposed before at in exclamatories of colloquial Danish: Trenk at .. but not At ..

(obsolete).

The same analysis as for exclamatories will hold for desideratives beginning with_ tenk etc., including

28

the ungrammaticality of other forms of tenke etc. in those structures (*Jag tanker orn ... ): Da. Tcenk orn vi f ik ham at se ! 'If only we could see him!' No. Tenk orn vi kunne hatt deg rned oss! 'If only you could have been with us!' Sw. Tank orn jag gifter rnig rned prasten! 'What if I marry the minister?' Now, as a matter of fact, there is one fault with this analysis of sentences with tenk orn etc. They are no literal desideratives, but only generally hypothetical ones. Cf. the following examples, where the hypothetical situation, in the normal interpretation, is not desired: No. Tenk orn rnor korn og sa deg! 'What if Mother came and caught you!' Sw. Tank orn vi kornmer for sent! 'What if we're late?' If we now turn bc:i.ck to sentences beginning with~ alone, we can find that although orn-sentences are dominantly desiderative in formal style, other hypothetical orn-sentences are not infrequent in colloquial style: No. Orn fru Inger skulle ha ant urad! twhat if Lady Inger might have suspected something! ' Sw. Orn du bara understar dig att gora sa en gang till! 'Don't you ever do that again!' This suggests the analysis that all cm-sentences might only be literally hypothetical and that the desiderative force observed in many of them might have to be pragmatically interpreted. This again, raises some doubts as to the existence of a desiderative sentencetype in present-day Scandinavian, taking the vanishing of the optative or· subjunctive mood into consideration. Before rashly re-baptiz~ng the sentence-type

29

as "hypothetical'', let us however consider sentences with Da. No. rnon, Sw. rnanne and Da. rnaske, No. kanskje, Sw. kanske 'perhaps'. Erik Andersson (1982: 73) takes up the fact that such sentences show optional subclause word order: Sw. Manne det blir nagon avslutning? 'I wonder if there will be a graduation ceremony' sw. ~anske det inte blir nagon avslutning 'Perhaps there will be no graduation ceremony' Examples from Danish and Norwegian are: Da. Non han ikke snart kornrner? 'Don't you think he'll be here soon?' No. Mon der ikke er noen arvelig galskap i farnilien 'I wonder whether there might be congenital madness in the family' Da. Maske De er sa god at forklare Dern 1

Will you please explain yourself?'

No. Kanskje han kommer i rnorgen 1

Perhaps he'll be here tomorrow'

The finite verb occurs later than second position. Erik Andersson notes that kanske-sentences are not typical assertions, since they are connected with an uncertain fact, while rnanne-sentences. are not typical questions, an answer not being strictly necessary. The latter fact means that rnanne-sentences

are not

literally interactive, they do not belong to the interrogative sentence-type. Orn the other hand, as is seen in one or two of the examples above, kanske (rnaske, kanskje) may also be used to indicate indirect questions. I think it is possible to give the two words a common semantic analysis as far as their literal relation to their sentence-type goes. Kanske 'perhaps' is a sentence adverb lowering the degree of commitment to the truth of the proposition; thus, it can occur in declaratives (with the finite verb in the second position). However, what is special for kanske (maske, kanskje) is (and here is the point

_ : _ ' _ ,_ _ _ - _ -_ _ , _ _~ _ _•_ _ _ , _ , , ________ , , _ , _ _ _ · , ,

~

,""',

~·.

:

"

~

,,

',

•

'i.

,

30 where manne joins) that it places the expressed attitude at an equal distance from the value "true" as from the value "false" of the proposition. Thus, kanske literally indicates an attitude of simple non-commitment: this, I mean, accounts for the optional non-declative word order. Manne (mon), likewise, indicates non-commitment; I leave the differences between the two words unanalyzed, since it is not central to the discussion here. I now proceed to claim that it is the attitude of non-commitment to the truth of the proposition that all the cm-sentences and tenk cm-sentences have in common, whether or not they are meant as desideratives. I thus suggest that this sentence-type is negatively defined in relation to the declarative as a mittal

sentence-type.

~2~:~2~:

(The term hyEothetical will do,

if one accepts calling sentences such those with kanske (maske, kanskje) and manne (mon) hypothetical.) This broad, non-commi t'tal definition is often us·ed in older literature, as a means of finding a common denominator for sentences in the subjunctive mood in old Scandinavian, Latiri

or modern German (Jespersen 1924: 317).

The existence of a clear desiderative sentence-type might possibly have been a transient stage in the development of the Scandinavian languages, when the present subjunctive was still a living form but specialized for the optative meaning. It is, incidentally, no coincidence that non-committal sentences are so often interpreted as, e.g., clear wishes or warnings. There have to be special reasons for people to talk about possible or hypothetical facts. In particular, these non-committal sentences are full sentences: as such, they indicate the existence of an illocutionary act (cf. Searle 1969: 29) · Sometimes, there are lexical items directly or indirectly indicating the positive attitude that is only negatively defined by the non-committal sentencetype ( e.g., Da.No. gid, Da. dog, No. enda, Sw. a··nda indicating a desiderative).

31 Except for the remnants of the present subjunctive, the non-committal sentences that we have treated so far have the finite verb in a position later than the second. There are, however, also sentences of the following form: No. Hadde jeg enda visst det f~r! 'If only I had known before!' They are historical ellipses of conditional sentences with the main clause left out. This type of conditional subclauses is often called Sw. frageformad 'question-formed'. As full sentences, they do not demand an answer and cannot even be given one. They are not on a par with rhetorical questions, which can be treated according to their literal sentence-type and can be answered. Thus, there are hypothetical sentences, outside those in the subjunctive mood, with the finite verb in the first position. What is important is the negative definition of verb placement: the finite verb does not occur in the second position. What has been said so far does not amount to a claim that the second position is avoided in all exclamatories and non-committals, but the position of the finite verb is one of very few formal indicators of sentence-type in present-day Scandinavian. It can be combined with or replaced by another formal indicator, as is demonstrated in the next section. Wh-questions remain to be analyzed. They have their finite verbs in second position, cf. the following simple examples from Diderichsen (1957: 162): Da. Hvem har sagt at vi kan? 'Who said we could?' Da. Hvorfor hedder din hund "Snap"? 'Why did you name your dog Snap?' This word order could be accounted for by an analysis

:

~

. ---

··---··- - ··----:

32

of wh-questions as partly declarative (cf · p · 6 ab ove) . However, I prefer to point at tendencies, althou g h .l.llJ.J.1 •. ted, to avoid the second position for the finite verb even in wh-questions. First, there are widespread regional varieties of Norwegian, where the finite verb (optionally) takes a later position (Lie 1976: 27, 47): No. Ka du vil? 'What do you want?' No. Kem som ikkje har ete opp maten sin? 'Who hasn't finished his dinner?' Second, in all the Scandinavian languages, the te n d ency to cleft sentences is particularly strong with wh -questions and does not necessarily have the same "emphatic" character as with declaratives (Lie 1976: 76, Thorell 1977: 268): vem er det som kommer? Da. No . H 'Who's coming?' No. Nar er det de reiser? •when are they going?' sw. vad var det du sa nyss om ris? •what was it you said just now about rice?' Although an auxiliary now occupies the second the effect of the cleaving of the sentence is most important finite verb comes later. It is that the above-mentioned variants in regional

position, that the supposed Norwe1976 gian have developed out of cleft sentences (Lie , ). I believe the tendency to cleft sentence is strong27 if an obligatory constituent (e.g. subject, object) er . t. oned than if an optional constituent is ques1.s. ques d ( 1. g reason adverbial, by Da.No. hvorfor t1.one e. ' .. ·•why') This may be related to the fact sw. -var f QEdetails • of the proposition are presupposed that more tt r case, i.e. the sentence is more closely . 1.n the 1 a e claratives (cf. P· 6 above). de relate d t o

33

From a communicative point of view, the initial question . word effectively signals the interrogative senten ce- t ype. There is thus no apparent need to avoid the second posi, tion for the finite verb. Rather, this position differentiates interrogatives from exclamatories and echoguestions, where the finite verb comes later (cf · Hammarberg & Viberg 1975: 19, 25): har han? sw. Vilka ansprak he make?' 'What demands does han har! sw. Vilka ansprak he makes!' 'What demands ansprak han har? sw. Vilka what demands does he make?' 'Do you mean, Nice as a communicative explanation, it blurs the systematicity I am advocating, where the position of the finite verb differentiates declaratives from non-declaratives. Again, the declarative element of wh-questions can be stressed, but it is more important to stress the intimate relation of finite verb position to sentence-type as a long-term developmental tendency rather than a full-blown fact. The question word as such can be analyzed as a formal indicator of sentence-type, and as we shall see in the next section, various sentence-types can have their finite verbs in the second position, provided there is some other formal indicator of sentence-type. In the foregoing, I have concentrated on the difference between the second position for the finite verb and ·ti'ons at the expense of the difference bet other posi ' ween the first position and the third or fourth posi. There is some evidence that the latter diffet1ons . . less important. I have shown that non-commitrence is

tween these positions, cf. in particular be tals varY the following pair: adde jeg enda visst det f~r! No. H'If onlY I had known before!'

34

No. Orn jeg enda hadde visst det f~r! 'If only I had known before!' Even for yes-no interrogatives, for which the first position seems obligatory, evidence can be found that the third position is preferable to the second. Consider what happens in the rare cases when another full sentence is coordinated with an interrogative sentence. The following could be seen on the back cover of the 1980 Goteborg telephone book: Sw. Vill du kunna sanda dina handskrivna manus till redaktionen fore klockan 11 och klockan redan ar 10.55? 'Do you want to be able to send your hand-written articles to the editorial office by 11:00, when it is already 10:55?' 2.2. Temporal reference Scandinavian languages refer to the time of the event using the flexion of the finite verb. In this respect, they resemble related languages such as English. Thus, use of the preterite means that the event, or state of affairs, occun:ed:in the past (once or iteratively): Sw. Jag hjalpte henne med laxorna 'I helped her with her homework' Otherwise, the finite has the present tense. This may be analyzed as having the negatively formulated meaning that the event, or state of affairs, is not limited to the past. Thus, the sentence, Sw. Jag hjalper henne med laxorna may mean 'I am helping her with her homework'. 'I help her with her homework' (iteratively), 'I will help her with her homeworkl. This may be a simplistic analysis, and certainly, it has been delivered with much greater sophistication elsewhere. Most details do, however, fit this general pattern. To touch upon just one possible objection, the perfect tense, containing the present tense of

35

its finite auxiliary, can be claimed to describe a present state of affairs (the result of the event) and thus not to be limited to the past. What interests us here is not the details but the fact that the time reference in the flexion of the finite is not self-evident in all sentence-types but is characteristically obligatory in declaratives. First, jussives have no flexional variation of the finite verb at all. The imperative mood - which is still fully alive in Scandinavian languages - shows only one form: Da. Glem ikke hvad jeg sagde! 'Don't forget what I said!' No. Korn hit! 'Come here ! ' Sw. Hjalp henne med laxorna! 'Help her with her homework!' The older numeral inflection is obsolete. The periphrastic first

person plural imperative is still current in

Danish and Norwegian (whereas its Swedish counterpart is stilistically highly marked): Da. Lad os nu komme af sted!

'Let's get going now', No. La oss gA!

'Let's

go'. The word, Da. lad, No. la should possibly be analyzed as a lexical marker of sentence-type, but I believe that its verbal characteristics are

still felt,

so that the sentences are literally ordinary jussives. Exclamatories may well indicate time reference with their verb flexion. Thus, the difference between the two following examples means a time difference: Sw. Vilka ansprAk han har! 'What demands he makes!' Sw. Vilka ansprAk han hade! '·What demands he made!' There are, however, cases where the present tense is avoided although the sentence does not exclusively refer to the past:

36

Da. Det var vel nok en flot bil! 'What a grand car!' Da. Det var da ogsa som pokker! ' I ' l l be darned!' No. Dette var god kaffe! 'This coffee is delicious' No. Det var da merkelig! 'That' s funny! ' sw. Det dar var vackra tavlor! 'What lovely paintings those are!' These are cases where the finite verb occurs in the second position, as in declaratives. I take the use of the preterite in a function not referring to past time as a formal indicator of the non-declarative sentence-type. The proposition is not asserteQ but presupposed (which is polite, of course, in a sentence· such as Dette var god kaffe). In non-committal sentences, including desideratives, it is well known that tense differences in the old subjunctive mood do not refer to time differences on the whole. With the vanishing of subjunctive mood, the common preterite has taken the function of stressing the hypothetical nature of the sentence: Da. Hvis jeg blot kunne hjrelpe! 'If only I could help!' Da. Trenk om vi fik ham at se! 'If only we could see him!' No. Tenk om mor kom Og Sa deg! 'What if Mother came and caught you! ' Sw. Orn jag kunde begripa hur det har gatt till! 'I only wish I could figure out how it happened!' Da. Hvis jeg vidste det, sagde jeg det 'If I only knew, I'd tell you'

37

No. Sj~l om du gav meg tusen kroner, ville jeg ikke dra dit 'Even if you gave me a thousand kroner, I wouldn't go there' Sw. Jag gjorde det inte, om du gav mig aldrig det 'I wouldn't do it, even if you gave me the earth' These sentences refer even uniquely to present or future'tlme, because reference to past time is made using the past perfect (and thus not with a difference in the flexion of the finite verb). Hypothetical sentences with past perfect, on the other hand, are ambiguous - they can refer to past time or indicate a very unreal fact in present time: Sw. Orn jag anda hade kunnat hjalpa dem med ett lan! 'If only I could have given them a loan!' No. Hadde hun vcert

her, hadde det vcert

hyggeligere

'If she had been here, it would have been nicer' With this sentence-type, too, there are cases where the finite verb occurs in second position and where its preterite form, without reference to past time, is the only formal indicator of the non-declarative sentence-type. The conditional complex sentences just exemplified belong to this category. Other examples may be taken from free indirect speech: No. Nei, han kom vel til a dra i morgen 'No, he would go tomorrow' This is a case which shows that "non-committal" is a better term for the sentence-type than "hypothetical". What is indicated by the preterite (as a formal indicator of sentence-type) is precisely that the speaker does not guarantee the truth of the proposition. Another_:_ case

is the "modest preterite":

Da. Deville vel ikke lane mig en tcendstik 'You couldn't possibly spare me a match' No. Jeg ville gjerne fa komme til dere i kveld 'I'd very much like to see you this evening'

38

No. Du kunne ta fejl 'You might be wrong' Sw. Jag ville bara tacka for sist 'I just wanted to say thank you for having us last week' Again, to call these sentences hypothetical is somewhat misleading. The literal attitude is one of non-commitment to the truth value. There are different social reasons for avoiding a literal commitment: to make a desire modest (jeg ville gjerne), a blame less blunt (du kunne ta fejl) etc. Again, the sentence-type is too wide to be called desiderative (cf. Du kunne ta !ejl). Still another case is the "playing preterite''

!~g~9~t!£).

(Da.

It is now well confirmed that when child-

ren play, they may simultaneously report the events of the play in preterite. The following conversation is taken from Vannebo 1978: 373: No. - Nar de h~rte toget tuta, da begynte de a ri 'When they heard that the train whistled, they started to ride' - Sa reid han inn her, mens den andre reid mot vinduet 'Then he rode in here, while the other one rode toward the window' - Sa leker vi at de blir saret, og sa hoppa de pa disse vognene her, og sa bytta de ... 'And then we play that they get hurt, and they jumped up onto these cars here, and then they switched ... ' - Du reid fra cowboy-leiren, og sa kom jeg med h~vdingen her ... 'You rode out of the cowboys' camp, and then I brought this here chief' A Danish example is the following (Meyer 1982): Da . . . . og jeg var jo hende der kom hjem nu ' ... and I was the one who just got home' I have had the same phenomenon certified to by Swedish parents (I think Alvar Ellegard was the first one), and I have heard it abundantly from my own children.

39

I interpret the function of the preterite in these sentences as an indication of a non-commitment to the truth of the propositions. That is, the children are aware that their playing is not reality. This interpretation is more in accordance with Meyer 1982 than with Vannebo 1978. It is notable that there is one occurrence of present tense in a main clause in the quotation from Vannebo above, and that is saleker vi 'then we play'. This is of course a statement about the real world, to which the speaker can commit himself. Most interrogatives do have time reference in their finite verb flexion. I take this to be due to the fact that most questions ask for a declarative attitude. Thus, the form of the verb does not indicate the interactive, interrogative sentence-type, but the attitude asked for. If a non-committal attitude is asked for, this may be indicated early on by subjunctive mood in the interrogative: Sw. Vad vore livet utan surstromming? 'What would life be without fermented herring?' Similarly, the question may invite a non-committal "modest preterite" in the answer: No. Bva var navnet? 'Whatts your name, please?' Sw. Vad fick det lov att vara? tWhat would you like, sir?' I do not agree with Vannebo (1978: 174) that such sentences must presuppose that the information has already been given once. What is problematical in the establishment of time reference in the finite verb as a formal indicator of sentence-type is that it is not strictly formal. Thus, the same preterite form is claimed to refer sometimes to past time in a declarative sentence, sometimes to

40

indicate a non-declarative sentence-type. In some cases, then, as in sw. Jag ville bara tacka for sist (cf . a b ove ) , there is no formal difference between the two readings. Also, I do not intend to reject the idea that the two functions of the preterite have someting in common, namely its being "the remote tense" (Vannebo 1978: 182 _ 183 and literature cited there). Nevertheless, the two functions can be kept apart in clear-cut cases. on the one hand, the preterite may be the sole indicator of past time in declarative sentences. Thus, both sw. Jag hjalpte henne med laxorna 'I helped her with her homework' and sw. Jag hjalper henne med laxorna 'I am helping her with her homework' may be appropriate answers to the question, Sw. Varfor ar hon sA arg? 'Why is she so angry?', but they differ from each other in their meanings. On the other hand, there may be occurrences (as in some of the examples above) of references to present or future time, incompatible with a past time meaning of the verb, in non-declarative sentences (as well as references to spatial presence). In such sentences, the preterite must, in my opinion, be interpreted as a literal indicator of the non-declarative sentence-type. . !_?ll sentence form 2 3

all sentence-types may occur in elliptical Of . w1.'thout a finite verb. However, I would make vers1.ons . ture that the tendency to such ellipsis is a conJec weaker with declarative sentences than with others . . th reverse form, my impression is that declaraput 1.n e tendency to retain their full sentence tives have a sw. FardigJ_ 'Ready' is certainly a possible form. T h us, -~~--.,,_ ' ' I . i·teral declarat1.ve, mean1.ng I am ready' but swed1.sh 1. ·ated with children's language. In a con' it is assocJ. . b tween two adults, a full sentence such as versat1.on _ ~- e ~ f a ~ 'Now I am ready' would be more Sentence S

4 0

sw.~ current. ces are thus more often ellipses of J'ussiNominal senten En o.JJ. 'A beer!', Sw. Ett paket Pri'nce.' S ve sentences: w. a

&nii&IA.·~;Mf

ffffffli( p

d

41 'A package of Prince!', Sw. Skalpellen!

'Scalpel!,

There are social restrictions on their use, but the way to make them more polite is not necessarily to make the finite verb overt. Adding a non-predicating sentence is often a better way: Sw. Ett paket Prince, tack!

'A package of Prince, please!'

There are also exclarnatories among the nominal sentences, e.g. Sw. Den skurken!

'That crook!', as well as

non-committals, in particular desideratives: Sw. Lycklig resa!

'Bon voyage!', Da. Gl~delig

jul!

Christmas', Sw. Ett kungarike for en hast!

'Merry 'My king-

dom for a horse!' Also adjectival remnants of full sentences are often called nominal sentences; there are in particular exclarnatorj.es in this category: Da. Ford~rnt!

'Dammit!', No. Sa hyggelig!

'How nice!'

Finally, a non-committal such as Da. Harn forlove sig! 'He getting engaged!', with an infinitive but no finite verb, should possibly count as elliptical. It is also possible to set up an infinitival sentence-type: such sentences represent Diderichsen's idea of a true non-committal (Diderichsen 1966: 36). If my impression is correct, there may be a connection between the function of the finite verb as indicator of the declarative sentence-type (via its position and time reference) and the tendency to retain it. Elliptical declaratives are of course common as answers; in such cases, however, the finite verb (with its time reference) has normally already occurred in the question. Another notable case of omission of finite verb in declaratives consists of proverbs, e.g. Da. Ingen roser uden torne '(lit.) No rose without a thorn'. It is characteristic of (the use of) proverbs that they are not

very

assertive, but remind us of long-standing

truths. The tendency to full declarative sentences, if it exists, is typical of colloquial style. For instance,

42

in newspaper headlines, the deletion of the finite verb is a well-known style indicator. It is in spoken language that the basic tendencies to formal differentiators of sentence-types are to be found.

-----------~·--·-~~----a-

- -

--

43

3. Scandinavian reactives It does not seem possible to distinguish more than one non-predicating sentence-type on formal grounds. I have mentioned above (p. 9) that it typically consists of one single word. Furthermore, this word is in most cases not declinable. Vocatives may, however,

consist

of inflected nouns, and they may have modifiers (cf. Diderichsen 1957: 252). They are also the only lexical units that have a normal use in both predicating and non-predicating sentences. But singling out vocatives as a sentence-type of its own does not get us very far in semantic differentiation of sentence-types. It would have been nicer if it could have been claimed that all non-predicating sentences have a cornrnc·n element in their literal meaning. As we have seen, this is not possible. There is, however, some reason to regard those with reactive meanings as a central group, particularly if we can leave vocatives aside. One particular reason is the existence of the reverse generalization that reactives are never predicating in their structure. In this section, I concentrate on reactives. Most of the detail is used in accounting for the analysis that has brought me to the view of the basic meaning of Da.No.Sw. ~ 'yes' as an attitude of commitment to the truth of a previous proposition, although at first glance, some instances may seem to mean more than that, while others seem to mean

other

things.

3.1. The meaning of ja The larger dictionaries (ODS, Nudansk Ordbog, Norsk Riksmalsordbok, SAOB) provide traditional analyses o f ~ as well as a good number of examples. Some of

44

these are trivial editorial examples, others represent obsolete or overly literary functions. Nevertheless, when used with care, the dictionaries' collection of examples has an obvious advantage over a similar collection all invented by myself, and moreover, they represent a deliberate attempt by the editors to cover all the main functions of~- I have felt free to use some examples from the 19th century as well, if I have considered them in accordance with present-day use; however, I have used modern spelling and modern word forms throughout. Not surprisingly, we find that the dictionaries set up the affirmative meaning of~ first. This could tentatively be seen as a function of assigning truth values to propositions. However, the function as the second member of an adjacency pair starting with a question is only one possibility: Da.No.Sw. - Kommer du? 'Are you coming?' - Ja 'Yes' No. - Har De fatt noe brev fra min hustru? 'Have you received a letter from my wife?' - Ja, jag har det 'Yes, I have' Another possibility for~ is to follow upon a statement: Da. - Det var godt gjort 'That was well done' - Ja, det var det 'Yes, it was' No. - De er kalkede grave, disse store samfunn natildags 'Today's big communities are whited sepulchres' - Ja, deter visst og sant 1 Yes, that's very true' In these cases, the truth is already assigned by the statement. The affirmation in the subsequent~ is no

45

more than an endorsement of the claim already made. It is more congruent with the two functions o f ~ mentioned so far to see~ as an indicator of attitude. Ja will then indicate the same attitude as the declarative sentence-type, not to the propositional content of its own sentence, but to that of the preceding one. The indicated declarative attitude is non-adversative, i.e. there is no negation added or deleted.

(There is

also the constraint - like in English - that the preceding proposition should itself be in a non-negative form. I will make use of this constraint later on; its explanation is hardly structural but lies somewhere in the realm of the difficulty of the brain in handling double negatives.) The proposed analysis fits with cases where~ endorses the truth value of the propositional content of exclamatory sentences: Da. - Nej, hvor det ~ser ned! 'Oh no, it's pouring' - Ja, det g~r det 'Yes, it is' In the first utterance, the truth of the proposition is not claimed but presupposed (cf. Searle 1976: 13) · The~ of the second utterance, on the other hand, is a commitment to the truth of the proposition, and this is borne out once more by the following declarative sentence (det g~r det 'it is'). I will thus claim that the basic meaning o f ~ is reactive and non-adversative to the truth value of the propositional content of a preceding sentence. It makes no difference in principle if a subsequent sentence conditions the non-adversative attitude, e.g. the affirmation of a question: Da . .;;.. Kommer du i morgen? 'Will you come tomorrow?' - Ja, hvis jeg kan 'Yes, if I can'

46

It seems to depend on the conversational situation whether a conditioned affirmation is preferred over a conditional denial. Cf.

(my example):

Sw. - ~r det oppet har? 'Is this door open?' - Nej, bara for personal 'No, only for emplyees' In some cases, however, it is extremely doubtful whether ~

expresses any endorsement at all of the truth value

of the preceding proposition. Consider the following utterances: Sw. - Kommer han hit? 'Will he be coming?' - Ja, den som visste det 'Well, your guess is as good as mine' No. - Det matte vcere

avstand mellom oss -

'There must be a distance between us - Ja, matte det endelig det, Arnold? 'Well, must there really, Arnold?' No. - Sa kunne jeg vise deg hulen 'And I could show you the cave' - Ja, men jeg er sa redd. Du sa den var sa m~rk 'Well, but I'm so scared. You said it was so dark' Da. - Jeg kan f~rst komme i rnorgen 'I can't come until tomorrow' - Ja, sa kan det ikke nytte 'Well, there's no use then' Some of the dictionaries talk of a "weakened meaning" o f ~ in cases like these. With the help of modern theory, however, it is possible to see that the difference is qualitative rather than quantitative. In the last-mentioned examples, the reactive, non-adversative attitude is not taken towards the propositional content, but to the preceding speech act as such. Thus, the second speaker acknowledges the first speaker's right to pose the question or statement, and thereby,

47

he puts himself under the obligation to take his turn in the conversation. It is no coincidence that in all the four examples, the answer following the~ deviates in one way or the other from the expected answer, either by neglecting to supply the information asked for or by some form of objection. such answers would be what is called "dispreferred seconds" in conversational analysi:s. Such "dispreferred seconds" are "typically delivered ... with ~some preface marking their dispreferred status, often the particle well" (Levinson 1983: 307). It can be observed that in these cases, No. vel is an alternative to No.~ (e.g. Vel, matte det endelig det?). My analysis here shows that the very meaning of Da.No.Sw. ~, No. vel, English well is not that of marking the status of the following sentence: it means a non-adversative attitude to the preceding utterance, implying that the conversational obligation to deliver an answer is ,not objected to as such. Such a ~ can when a straightforward below); it is a matter tional strategies that

be uttered even in cases answer is directly given (cf. of culture-dependent conversait is more typically resorted

to before "dispreferred seconds". The most typical situation in which~ means a non-adversative attitude to another speech act is reasonably as a reply to a vocative: No. (Hjalmar:) - Gina! (Gina:) - Ja? Here, it is still more obvious that there is nothing affirmative or endorsing in~- By her~, the second speaker indicates that she has apprehended the first speaker's call. However, it is not an unspecified reactive. Here as well,~ means an acknowledgement of the first speaker's right to call. Indirectly, this will mean an acceptance to participate in the conversation:~ thus functions as a "go ahead" signal here (cf. Levinson 1983: 357). This is in general accord with Allwood's view on acknowledgers (p. 11 above), although Allwood only mentions the opposite possibility,

48 namely the ending signal (1976: 226). For some instances, it can be demonstrated that there is a real qualitative difference, or a real ambiguity, between~ referring to a proposition and~ referring to a speech act. It has been mentioned in passing that ~

- just like English~ - cannot refer to a negated

proposition; this is an utterly well-known fact. Thus, to Sw. Kan du inte komma i morgon? 'Can't you come tomorrow?' the non-adversative, literally reactive response is Na (det kan jag inte)

'No

(I can't)' where-

as the adversative, literally reactive response is Jo (det kan jag)

'Yes

(I cari) '.

J~ is impossible as a

reaction to the negated proposition. Now, the constraint that~ cannot occur after a negated sentence does not hold if it is the speech act that is referred to. Consider my following examples: Sw. - Kan du inte komma i morgon? 'Can 1 t you come tomorrow?' - Ja, det ar lite svart att saga 'Well, it's difficult to say' Da. - Jeg kan ikke komme i dag 'I cannot come today' - Ja, sa kan det ikke nytte 'Well, then there's no use in coming at all' Furhtermore, there are some indications that the attitude to propositional content is more basic as the meaning o f ~ then the attitude to speech act. First, note that it is difficult, without strong prosodic cues, to avoid the affirmative meaning o f ~ as an answer to a question if it is not followed by a sentence blocking that meaning. Thus, to the above example Sw. Kommer han hit? 'Will he be coming?', a plain Ja as an answer would normally be interpreted as 'he will be coming'. This interpretation will however be blocked if ~-is immediately followed by a sentence such as den som visste det 'your guess is as good as mine'. Seen in this light, it is clear why the use of

49

non-endo,rsing 2 is free after vocatives: in that si tuation, there is no propositional content that could be endorsed, and the speech act is the only unit the non-adversative attitude can be directed towards. Second, consider the occurrence of~ after imperative sentences. There are few examples in the dictionaries

'

such as the following one: sw. - var snall och lagg det har brevet pa posten for mig! 'Will you please post this letter for me?' - Ja, garna! 'Yes, I'd be happy to' To my intuition,~ is less self-evident in this function ' as compared to the non-adversative reactions to questions and statements. I will connect this with the fact that 2 does not refer to a truth value but, in general terms, indicates a positive attitude to compliance that may well lie in the future. The very meaning of 2 could possibly be the non-adversative attitude to the directive speech act, although I am not sure that acknowledging a person's right to issue an order is the same as promising to comply. There is, however, a class of imperatives where~ is a very natural (positive) reply. It is where the verbal answer constitutes the very compliance: Da. - Lov mig at tie stille dermed! 'Promise that you won't breathe a word of it!' - Ja 'Yes' I connect this naturalness with the fact that this~ can be seen as having the meaning of a non-adversative, declarative attitude to the truth value of a proposition. Typically, if the promise is spelt out by a full sentence following upon the~' it repeats the proposition of the preceding utterance (with the covert second person turned into an overt first person pronoun and one object deleted, the other pronominalized):

50 Ja, det lover jeg 'Yes, I promise'. And whether the speech act is called a promise or something else, it is obvious that the full sentence shows the declarative sentence-type; thus, I will claim, it literally endorses the truth value of its propositional content. In the same fashion, the naturalness of a solitary ~

after indirect requests in the interrogative form

is connected with the analysis of the literal meaning o f ~ as showing a declarative and non-adversative attitude to the truth value: Da. - Forsager du djrevelen? 'Do you abandon the devil?' - Ja! 'Yes!' Da. - Vil du vrere min? 'Will you be mine?' - Ja! 'Yes!' The alternative would be to see~ as literally indicating a non-adversative attitude to the request or its compliance. Both analyses can be supported by equally natural continuations. On one hand, Ja, detg(15r ~

'Yes, I do', and Ja, det vil jeg 'Yes, I will' are

natural answers, supporting the truth value analysis. On the other hand, Ja, det lover jeg 'Yes, I promise' seems just as natural, thus supporting the compliance analysis. But again, the alternatives can be tested towards the constraint on~ after negated sentences. The result is that the constraint holds with either continuation, thus even with 'I promise' (my example): Sw. - Staller du alltsa inte upp? 'So you won't do it?' - Na (*Ja), det lovar jag (att inte gora) 'No (*Yes), I promise (I won't)' What I have called the basic meaning o f ~ is thus preferred in these situations. Ja has no direct connection with the speech act. Returning to the simple examp-

51 le Kommer du? - Ja, there is thus no formal indication of whether Ja is uttered as a promise, an acceptance of an offer, or just a piece of information. Even as the initial part of the answer to a wh-question, ~maybe seen as having its basic meaning. Consider my example: Sw. - Vern var det som fick Jerikos murar att rasa? 'Who brought down the walls of Jericho?' - Ja, det var Josua 'Well, Joshua did' It is near at hand to see~ as indicating an attitude to the speech act, recognizing the first speaker's right to pose the ~uestion. However, I do not think this is the literal meaning, at least not in all answers to wh-guestions. In such questions there is a presupposition that smmeone etc.

(cf. p. 6 above). In the above

question, it is thus presupposed that someone made the walls of Jericho fall. I think the following~ endorses that presupposition. Note that if the presupposition is questioned,~ is, if not totally impossible, much less natural: Sw. - Vern var det som fick Jerikos murar att rasa? 'Who brought down the walls of Jericho?' -

(?Ja,) det var val ingen '(Well,) I don't think anybody did'

Furthermore,~ indicates that the answer asked for by the question word will be the one expected by the first speaker. This is in accordance with the non-adversative meaning of~- On the other hand, if the answer is presumed to be unexpected, or if no particular answer is judged to be expected, the adversative j_£ 'yes' will normally take on the function of endorsing the presupposition: Sw. - Vern var det som fick Jerikos murar att rasa? 'Who brought down the walls of Jericho?' - Jo, det var Josua 'lt was Joshua!'

52 As an answer to an exam question, Ja det var Josua will thus be noraml, while Jo det var Josua will be slitghtly impertinent.'Tstrnan 1979: 197) : sw. Han ar val antagligen dar 'I suppose he might be theret Furthermore, there is some indication in vel, val, la that the information is old. As I have hinted, the distinction between old and new information does not

71

affect the descriptions of literal meanings I am rendering (although it may add to them). But the relation between vel, val, la and old information may explain its pragmatic use in seeking the addressee's corroboration. As we have seen (p. 58), there seems to be a conversational rule that the addressee should make a commitment to the truth value of the proposition, unless it contains new information. By indicating that the information is old, the speaker thus forces the addressee to commit himself. Sometimes, the sentence is uttered with interrogative intonation: I describe such sentences as amalgamations (p. 81 below). Cf. that sentences such as the following ones have been described as "both a statement and a question" (Lars-Gunnar Andersson 1976: 34), or "something between a statement and a question'' (Heggelund 1981: 79): sw. Du har val/la ocksa bott i Haga (?) 'You've lived in Haga, too, haven't you?' No. Folk vet vel at dette er forbudt i fredningstiden? 'You'd think people would know that this was prohibited during sanctuary?' There may be different pragmatic reasons for committing oneself only to a modified truth (or for modifying the commitment to a truth, depending on which model of description is chosen), even if the speaker is fully convinced, e.g. a desire to be less blunt (cf. Aijmer 1977: 212): sw. Det var val det jag visste 'Didn't I tell you?'

Heggelund (1981:182) claims that No. nok has a higher degree of certainty than No. vel, e.g. in: No. Det blir nok til at jeg reiser 'I do think I'll be goingL I would rather believe that Da.No. nok, Sw. nog is synonymous to Da.No. vel, Sw. val, la as indicating

72

probability, and that the difference is that nok, nog in some sense indicates new information. Thus, nok, nog cannot be used with the intention of eliciting a commitment from the addressee. As with vel, val, there is a "modest" use of nok, nog in cases when the speaker is in fact convinced (cf. Borgstam 1977: 218, Heggelund 1981: 182): this use is, I believe, current in more situations in Danish, Norwegian, and Finland Swedish than in Swedish as spoken in Sweden. Borgstam (1977) makes an analysis of the "modal particle" nog, identifying it in its literal meaning with the grade adverbial nog 'enough'. This is a more radical reductionism than I am advocating. I am not prepared to commit myself to her analysis. The emotional intention or effect of sentences with Da.No. dais often mentioned (ODS, s.v. da, Heggelund 1981: 183). With the same flavour, Sw. da, da, da da, da da occurs mainly as following the predicating sentence and often as prosodically separated from it, thus constituting a sentence of its own (Lars-Gunnar Andersson 1976: 35). This arrangement is, however, common in the other two languages as well. I do not take its emotional nature as belonging the literal meaning of da (da etc.). Rather, I take the literal meaning, as developed out of the temporal and causal adverb Da.No. da, Sw. da, to be interactive, relating the speech act (generally in Swedish, the preceding speech act) reactively to something previous, perhaps basically another speech act: No. - Tornevceret

renset lufta

'That thunderstorm cleared the air' - Har det vrert

noe tordenvrer

na, da?

'Do you mean there was a thunderstorm just now?' No. - Du misjonerer ikke? 'Aren't you proselytizing?' - Jeg haper da inderlig ikke det 1

r

certainly hope not'

73

Da. - Konuner han i aften? 'Is he coming this evening?' - Ja, jeg ved da ikke bedre 'Yes, to the best of my knowledge' The second sentence of first example can be paraphrased, 'since you said that the thunderstorm cleared the air, I am asking whether there has been any thunderstorm', and similar paraphrases can be made for the other two examples. Like j_