Old Norse as anNPLanguage: With Observations on the Common Norse and Northwest Germanic Runic Inscriptions

Abstract

AbstractThe differences between languages with definite determiners and those without definite determiners have been the object of much research. Recently, Bošković has uncovered a number of one‐ and two‐way syntactic generalizations which serve to set these two typological groups apart. He accounts for the contrasts observed by proposing that languages with definite determiners (‘DP’ languages) have aDPlayer, while determiner‐less languages (‘NP’ languages) lack thisDPprojection altogether. Since the Old Germanic languages did not have fully grammaticalized definite articles, a reasonable hypothesis to explore might be that they wereNPlanguages in Bošković's sense. In this paper we explore this hypothesis, focusing mainly on Old Norse; where possible we also discuss Old Norse's historical predecessors Common Norse and Northwest Germanic (both of which are attested exclusively in runic inscriptions). The specificNPproperties considered in this paper are (A) the absence of a fully grammaticalized definite article, (B) syntactic discontinuities and free word order, (C) the absence of double adnominal genitives with transitive deverbal nouns, (D) the absence of clitic doubling and (E) the presence of radical argument drop. The paper's approach is guided by basic generative assumptions, but its focus is descriptive rather than theoretical.