Agreement
sin (, si, sitt, sine) (determiner, possessive) is the reflexive possessive in Norwegian (both Bokmål and Nynorsk). It inflects in gender and number, although gender is oblique in plural.
Norwegian nouns have an inherent gender: feminine, masculine or neuter. They do not inflect in gender -- they have a static one that does not change.
Hunden hadde i sin grådigheit forveksla refleksjonen sin med ein annan hund med bein.
“The dog in its greed had mistaken his reflection for another dog with a bone.”
| Hunden |
| hund | en |
| dog | SGDEF |
| NMASC |
| sin |
| si | n |
| REFL | AGRMASC |
| PNposs |
| grådigheit |
| grådigheit |
| greed |
| NFEM |
| forveksla |
| forveksl | a |
| mix | PRF |
| V |
| refleksjonen |
| refleksjon | en |
| reflection | SGDEF |
| NMASC |
| sin |
| si | n |
| REFL | AGRMASC |
| PNposs |
| ein |
| ein |
| aINDEFMASCSGAGR |
| DET |
Editor
This sentence has an auxiliary and a main verb. In between them is an adverbial phrase.
In the provided example, there are two occurrences of sin. Although they both look identical, they have different controllers.
The first occurence, «hunden hadde i sin», the controller is the noun hunden. It has the inherent feature NMASC, and it is singular definite. Gender and number is reflected in the possessive, where sin is the masculine singular. This is arguably a case of agreement, where the controller is the noun hunden, the target is sin, and the features are gender and number.
(the workings of the domains of anaphors to me feels a bit complicated, but as far as I can tell -- Domains can span from the beginning to the end of a sentence, as well as into subclauses).
The second occurence, «(...) forveksla refleksjonen sin», the controller is the noun refleksjonen. The agreement features are still gender and number.
An example to illustrate that it is in fact not hunden that is the controller, could be «(...) forveksla boka si». Boka (book) is a feminine noun, which is reflected in the inflection of the possessive.
Clause Linkage
I det han knurra for å skremme hunden, fall beinet i elva, borte for alltid.
“As he growled to scare the dog, the bone fell into the river, lost forever.”
| skremme |
| skremme |
| scareINF |
| V |
| hunden |
| hund | en |
| dog | SGDEF |
| NMASC |
| beinet |
| bein | et |
| bone | SGDEF |
| NNEUT |
Editor
«I det han knurra [for [å skremme hunden]]»
In terms of hierarchial downgrading, this seems to be an example of embedding, where the infinite phrase is embedded as an fill to the prepositional for.
The subordinate clause is desententialized; the verb skremme is not finite (but rather in the infinite form), and there is no expressed subject (for [å PRO skremme hunden]).
The subordinate clause seems to be inside the main clause (as part of an adverbial phrase).
The linking is made rather explicit by way of the infinitive marker in Norwegian, å, and relative to for -- this infinitive phrase is hardly mobile whatsoever.
Nicklas Nilsen 21:23, 16 February 2014 (UTC)