Scandinavian pancake constructions as a family of constructions

Abstract

This paper deals with a classical problem in Scandinavian grammar, so-called ‘pancake sentences’, nicknamed after examples like Pannekaker er godt ‘Pancakes are good’ where there seemingly is disagreement between the plural subject and the predicative adjective in the neuter singular. Our aim is twofold. From the theoretical point of view, we shall argue that there are advantages with a construction-based approach, and that such an approach is superior to previous analyses within various generative frameworks.The main reason for this is that the data require generalizations over combinations of subjects and predicative adjectives at a rather specific level. From a more empirical point of view, we shall argue that Scandinavian displays a range of different, but related pancake constructions. For the first time, corpus data are brought into the debate. We show that a construction type that has not received much attention previously is in fact the most frequent type, namely constructions where the subject is a deverbal noun.