Word order variation in attributive clauses in spoken Danish

References –

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Christensen, Tanya Karoli & Torben Juel Jensen. 2022. When Variants Lack Semantic Equivalence: Adverbial Subclause Word Order. In Tanya Karoli Christensen & Torben Juel Jensen (eds.), Explanations in Sociosyntactic Variation, 171-206. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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 Abstract –

Like all mainland Scandinavian languages, Danish distinguishes between two word orders: ‘Main clause’ word order places sentence adverbials and negations after the finite verb (V>Adv; cf. 1), while ‘subordinate clause’ word order places them before the finite verb (Adv>V; cf. 1’). Despite the terminology, both word orders are found in subclauses:

(1) (han hev sådan et bundt plovmænd op) der var bare rullet sammen
(he pulled out such a bundle of five-hundreds) that were just rolled up

(1’) der bare var rullet sammen
that just were rolled up

            ‘he pulled out such a bundle of five hundred kroner notes that were just rolled up’

Historically, ‘main clause’ word order was the typical choice for subordinate clauses, but over time ‘subordinate clause’ word order displaced it almost entirely in written language, with some regional difference in the pace of uptake of this new variant leading to differences between the western and eastern Danish traditional dialects (Pedersen 1996; Gregersen & Pedersen 2000; Heltoft 2005). Since the traditional terms for the two word orders are mis-nomers, we follow Hansen & Heltoft (2011) and refer to them using the functionally motivated terms ‘declarative’ (V>Adv) and ‘neutral’ (Adv>V) word order.
In a series of studies combining variationist methodology and functionalist theory, we have examined the word order variation in a large corpus of spoken Danish (the LANCHART corpus) in order to test whether the distribution can be explained by functional hypotheses. The Assertivety Hypothesis posits that the alternation relates to the illocutionary status of the subclause, meaning that the declarative variant signals that the subclause is assertive or at least has "constative potential", despite its syntactic subordination (Hooper & Thompson 1973; Meinunger 2006; Julien 2007; Hansen & Heltoft 2011; Julien 2015). The Foreground Hypothesis posits that the declarative variant signals that the most important information in the complex sentence is located in the subclause, rather than in the matrix clause (Verstraete 2004; Simons 2007; Wiklund et al. 2009; Jensen & Christensen 2013).
Our previous studies have focused on complement and adverbial clauses, and we have demonstrated that declarative word order is much more frequent in subclauses than commonly assumed (amounting to 64% and 58%, respectively), and that the distribution supports both of the hypotheses to varying degrees (Jensen & Christensen 2013; Christensen & Jensen 2015, 2022). In this presentation, we focus on attributive subclauses, which, overall, display a very low proportion of declarative word order (11%). However, this figure conceals substantial variation between subtypes, and the word order is significantly influenced by the factors syntactic function, conjunction type, adverbial type, length, and factuality of the subclause. We discuss the extent to which the two functional hypotheses can account for the variation, taking into account also non-linguistic variables such as speaker characteristics and time of recording. Additionally, we include qualitative analyses of the types of subclauses that exhibit an exceptionally high tendency for V>Adv word order (e.g. those with a semantically ‘light’ matrix clause).