Re: OT: Corpses, etc. (was: Re: Gender in conlangs (was: Re: Umlauts (was Re: Elves and Ill Bethisad)))

Quoting Isidora Zamora <isidora@...>:

> Andreas wrote:
>
> >Swedish, of course, packs duplicate definite marking into every other
> >sentence!
>
> How does it do that?  I don't think I'm familiar with Danish doing anything
> similar.
I think this particular nicety is restricted to Swedish and Norwegian.

Well, say you've got a noun, f'rinstance _en bil_ "a car"; the definite form
is _bilen_ "the car", with a suffix. If you instead had a nominalized
adjective, say _en stor_ "a big one", the definite form uses the independent
article instead; _den stora_ "a big one" (the final -a is just agreement). So
far, so good. The weirdness starts when you make a adj-noun phrase; the
definite form of _en stor bil_ "a big car" is _den stora bilen_ "the big car"
with both independent and suffixed article.

To further mess it up, the independent article tends to drop if the adj-noun
phrase becomes a fixed expression; _Svenska akademin_ for instance. Obviously,
adding a new adj causes the indep article to return _den ärevördiga Svenska
akademin_.

                                                       Andreas

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