Linn Iren Sjånes Rødvand

• Rødvand, Linn Iren Sjånes (2023). Possession in Patani. Language Typology and Universals. ISSN 1867-8319. 76(3), p. 443–470. doi: 10.1515/stuf-2023-2016. Full text in Research Archive
• Rødvand, Linn Iren Sjånes (2018). Systematic Variation in the Gender System in American Norwegian. In Kühl, Karoline & Petersen, Jan Heegård (Ed.), Selected Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Immigrant Languages in the Americas (WILA 8). Cascadilla Press. ISSN 978-1-57473-473-7. p. 88–95. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This paper investigates the gender system of 25 American Norwegian speakers by focusing on the indefinite article and personal pronouns referring to inanimates (PPI). New data collected by the present author are presented. These data replicate the findings of previous studies as regards individual differences in gender agreement. Importantly however, careful examination of the systematically elicited data revealed that the individual variation is in fact limited and systematic. All speakers conform to one of four patterns of gender agreement: 1) retention of the original system; 2) loss of a separate feminine PPI; 3) loss of a feminine PPI, in addition to the use of only one, invariable article; 4) a new, semantically-based pronominal system. Across these four patterns of gender agreement, however, there is a strong tendency for masculine agreement forms to be used with non-masculine nouns. I argue that this can be interpreted as a result of processing difficulties.

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• Rødvand, Linn Iren Sjånes (2023). Post-verbal subjects in an SV language: non-agentivity and discourse structure . Show summary

  This paper explores post-verbal subject expressions in Patani (SHWNG, Austronesian), a surprising phenomenon in an otherwise SV language. While post-verbal subjects are restricted to non-Actor verbs and these occurrences as such are reminiscent of semantic alignment systems, the synchronic use of post-verbal subjects also seems to be connected to discourse structure and grounding. The Patani language is spoken on the island of Halmahera, North-Maluku, Indonesia. So far, this language has been poorly documented, but this paper is based on data (mostly spontaneous speech) collected by the author in 2019 and 2021. At first sight, Patani has a straightforward nominative-accusative alignment, which is the most widespread alignment pattern in SHWNG (Gasser et al. in press): The dominant word order in Patani is SV in intransitive clauses, and AVP in transitive clauses, and both the S argument and the A argument are indexed on the verb through a prefix. However, there are exception to this main pattern. Most notably, a pronominal form of the S argument occasionally follows the verb (VSPRO). This may come in addition to the subject prefix (lexically and pragmatically conditioned) and a preposed subject NP (pragmatically conditioned). As a result, the subject of an intransitive verbal predicate can be coded in three different ways, partly depending on verb type. Prefix Prefix + VSPRO VSPRO 1) n-cep 2) n-pólón i 3)tér-pung i 3SG-bathe 3SG-return 3SG IA-break 3SG ‘He bathes’ ‘He returns’ ‘It breaks’ The system sketched out in Table 1 above is reminiscent of patterns found in languages which are described as having split-S/semantic alignment in the region (see Klamer 2008, Holton 2008, Schapper 2015), where the encoding of the S argument depends on the lexical aspect of the verb (e.g. dynamic vs. non-dynamic) and/or agentive/patientive characteristics of the participant. In these languages, the encoding of the S argument is either identical to that of a P argument (like example 3 above), or it has double encoding as both A and P (like 2 above). The Patani system diverges from semantic alignment systems in that non-Actor verbs and intradirective verbs only occasionally occur with coding strategy 2; most commonly strategy 1 is chosen. Preliminary data suggests that the choice of coding strategy 2 is influenced by 1) lexical factors: for instance, pólón ‘return’ is much more likely to occur with coding strategy 1 than wé ‘return’; 2) pragmatic factors: strategy 2 is marked in terms of frequency and can therefore be used to express additional, pragmatic meaning. For instance, n-fan i ‘3SG-go 3SG’ can have the meaning ‘he escaped’ rather than just ‘he went’; 3) discourse structural factors: coding strategy 2 may be used to signal the end of a discourse-structural unit which furthermore serves a backgrounding function. These hypotheses will be further tested during fieldwork primo 2023, primarily through collection and analysis of narratives prompted by non-linguistic stimuli targeting intradirective and non-Actor verbs. As Riesberg et al. (2022: 509) note, discourse-structural units need to be defined on independent grounds. Arriving at an operationalizable definition of the relevant discourse units will therefore be an important goal in the analysis of the new narrative data.

• Rødvand, Linn Iren Sjånes (2021). Topicalization in Patani. Show summary

  This paper investigates the encoding of certain information structural properties in Patani (South Halmahera-West New Guinea) by considering two object fronting constructions which can be described as topicalization constructions. While this form of topicalization is not uncommon in Austronesian, the case of Patani is interesting since there are two different constructions: one construction contains a resumptive object pronoun in the post-verbal object position, whereas the other construction does not have such a pronominal form. Both topicalization constructions can be used to signal that the subject is not (the only) aboutness topic (in the sense of Lambrecht 1994: 127), and/or that the object referent is contrasted with other (highly accessible) referents (cf. Chafe 1994). Furthermore, new fieldwork data reveal interesting patterns concerning the difference between the two constructions: a) there is a preference for using a resumptive pronoun in the post-verbal position if the referent is animate, and b) a lack of resumptive pronoun seems to indicate that the referent will not remain topical. Finally, this paper notes the occurrence of another interesting construction where the subject referent is encoded by a resumptive pronoun in the post-verbal slot. Whereas this construction is very rare in the present data, certain pragmatic similarities are noted between this and the topicalization constructions.

• Fyndanis, Valantis; Johannessen, Janne Bondi; Kaldhol, Nina Hagen; Lundquist, Bjørn; Rodina, Yulia & Rødvand, Linn Iren Sjånes [Show all 8 contributors for this article] (2020). Predictive gender processing in L2 adult learners of Norwegian: Effects of L1 (Greek, Russian, Turkish), syntactic and lexical congruency.
• Rødvand, Linn Iren Sjånes (2020). Semantics of numeral classifiers in Patani.

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