{"id":1313,"date":"2022-06-15T20:38:33","date_gmt":"2022-06-15T20:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/?p=1313"},"modified":"2023-02-18T21:24:59","modified_gmt":"2023-02-18T21:24:59","slug":"defectivity-swedish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/defectivity-swedish\/","title":{"rendered":"Defectivity in Swedish"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[This is part of a small but growing series of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/category\/language\/defectivity\/\">defectivity case studies<\/a>.]<\/p>\n<p>Swedish has two genders: a common (or <em>uter<\/em>) and a\u00a0<em>neuter<\/em>. The uter form consists solely of the adjectival stem, whereas the neuter is formed by appending a suffix normally spelled <em>-tt<\/em>. This suffix, by hypothesis \/-t\u02d0\/, triggers voice assimilation, degemination and\/or vowel shortening in some stems. For instance, the neuter form of <em>r\u00f6d\u00a0<\/em>[r\u00f8\u02d0d] &#8216;red&#8217; is\u00a0<em>r\u00f6tt<\/em> [r\u0153t]: here \/&#8230;d-t\u02d0\/ is realized as just [t] as the result of assimilation and degemination, and long \/\u00f8\u02d0\/ is shortened to short (and lower) [\u0153].<\/p>\n<p>However, not all adjectives have a well-formed neuter (e.g., Hellberg 1972, Eliasson 1975, Iverson 1981, L\u00f6wenadler 2010). Some of the defective categories, after L\u00f6wenadler, are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Both monosyllabic adjectives ending in a short vowel followed by\u00a0<em>-dd<\/em>:\u00a0<em>fadd<\/em> &#8216;stale&#8217;, and <em>r\u00e4dd\u00a0<\/em>&#8216;scared&#8217;. (However, Hellberg notes that neuter past participles, which have the same surface form, are well-formed: thus <em>f\u00f6tt<\/em> is the well-formed neuter past participle of <em>f\u00f6da<\/em> &#8216;to feed&#8217;. Presumably the past participle formative \/-d-\/ is treated differently than stem-final \/-d\/.)<\/li>\n<li>Certain monosyllabic adjectives with long vowels ending in\u00a0<em>-t\u00a0<\/em>or\u00a0<em>-d<\/em>:\u00a0<em>lat\u00a0<\/em>&#8216;lazy&#8217;,\u00a0<em>flat<\/em> &#8216;ibid.&#8217;, <em>k\u00e5t<\/em> &#8216;horny&#8217;<em>, r\u00e4t <\/em>&#8216;straight&#8217;, <em>pryd<\/em> &#8216;prudish&#8217;, <em>vred<\/em> &#8216;wrathful&#8217;, <em>sn\u00f6d\u00a0<\/em>&#8216;vile&#8217;.<\/li>\n<li>Most polysyllabic adjectives in <em>-d <\/em>with final stress, many of which are borrowings from French: <em>morbid<\/em> &#8216;ibid.&#8217;, <em>hybrid<\/em> &#8216;ibid.&#8217;, <em>rapid<\/em> &#8216;ibid.&#8217;, <em>gravid<\/em> &#8216;pregnant&#8217;, <em>timid<\/em> &#8216;ibid.&#8217;. (However, Hellberg reports that <em>solid<\/em> &#8216;ibid.&#8217; has a neuter: <em>solitt<\/em> [sulit\u02d0] is apparently well-formed.)<\/li>\n<li>Adjectives ending in a stressed vowel: <em>distr\u00e4\u00a0<\/em>&#8216;absent-minded&#8217;, <em>blas\u00e9\u00a0<\/em>&#8216;ibid.&#8217;,\u00a0<em>kry<\/em> &#8216;healthy&#8217;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/defectivity-in-norwegian\/\">with Norwegian<\/a>, I am left wondering whether there are other places in Swedish grammar where\u00a0<em>-dd <\/em>affixation might lead to ineffability. Eliasson (1975) and Iverson (1981) claims that verbs in <em>-dd<\/em> never follow the second or third conjugation, in which certain cells would pose similar problems to the neuter adjectives. Instead such verbs all belong to the first conjugation, which has a theme marker <em>-a-\u00a0<\/em>which avoids this issue.<\/p>\n<p>It also seems that the wellformedness of <em>solitt\u00a0<\/em>will be an important point for any final theory. There is clearly some individual variation too, as documented by L\u00f6wenadler (2010).<\/p>\n<p>Other theoretical accounts of this phenomena, which I didn&#8217;t find much to say about, include Buchanan 2007, Lofstedt 2010, and Raffelsiefen 2002.<\/p>\n<h1>References<\/h1>\n<p>Buchanan, C. H. 2007. Deriving asymmetry in Swedish and Icelandic inflexional paradigms. Master&#8217;s thesis, University of Troms\u00f8.<br \/>\nEliasson, S. 1975. On the issue of directionality. In K.-H. Dahlstedt (ed.), <em>The Nordic Languages and Modern Linguistics 2,<\/em> pages 421-455. Almqvist &amp; Wiksell.<br \/>\nHellberg, S. 1972. Ordering relations in the phonology of Swedish adjectives. <em>Gothenburg Papers in Theoretical Linguistics\u00a0<\/em>13: 1-16.<br \/>\nIverson, G. 1981. Rules, constraints, and paradigm lacunae.\u00a0<em>Glossa<\/em> 15: 136-144.<br \/>\nLofstedt, I. P. M. 2010. Phonetic effects in Swedish phonology: allomorphy and paradigms. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.<br \/>\nL\u00f6wenadler, J. 2010. Restrictions on productivity: Defectiveness in Swedish adjective paradigms. <em>Morphology\u00a0<\/em>20: 70-107.<br \/>\nRaffelsiefen, R. 2002. Quantity and syllable weight in Swedish. Ms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[This is part of a small but growing series of defectivity case studies.] Swedish has two genders: a common (or uter) and a\u00a0neuter. The uter form consists solely of the adjectival stem, whereas the neuter is formed by appending a suffix normally spelled -tt. This suffix, by hypothesis \/-t\u02d0\/, triggers voice assimilation, degemination and\/or vowel &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/defectivity-swedish\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Defectivity in Swedish&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defectivity","category-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1313"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1696,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313\/revisions\/1696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}