Prepositional vs. indirect objects in Icelandic

Iðunn Kristínardóttir, Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

A corpus study of the Prepositional Object Construction (POC) in Icelandic shows that the POC is basically restricted to ditransitive verbs encoding motion or entailing successful transfer (Kristínardóttir 2021). By contrast, non-transfer verbs, e.g. communication verbs and verbs of future having, are more or less excluded from the POC. The goal, flagged by the preposition til ‘to’, preferably refers to clubs, associations, institutions, unspecified groups of people etc. rather than specific individuals or specific groups of individuals. Since the preposition til encodes the endpoint of motion in a broad sense, typical possessors like specific individuals are rare in the POC.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)32-46
JournalWorking Papers in Scandinavian Syntax
Volume107
Publication statusPublished - 2022

Cite this