Re: Danish enigma

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "hfroelandshagen" <gr-tegle@...>
wrote:

>
>
> There is one strange thing about Swedish that I haven't found in
> Danish or Norwegian. For mysterious reasons Swedish sometimes have
> three finite tenses in subordinate clauses. The auxiliary is

dropped

> leaving the participle alone, more often with passive than the

active

> I think.
>
> "...den entydigt visar at 16-åringen med uppsåt dödat 14-åringen"
> from
> http://svt.se/svt/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=22620&a=331963
>
> "Michael Englund kallar beskedet om att spelarna hämtats till

förhör

> för "chockartat och omtumlande"
> from
> http://svt.se/svt/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=19785&a=332267

I don't see the three finite tenses? In dependent clauses, the finite
forms of 'ha(va)' "have" can be dropped in Swedish. Elegant, isn't
it? I think German marginally uses a similar construction in
dependent clauses.

>
> Another Enigmatic issue in Scandinavian is the jungle of rules for
> promotion of sentence parts to initial position. In this Norw

sentence

> the subject of the subordinate clause is promoted to the initial
> position of the main clause (trigging inversion), thus the
> subjunction "at" takes a sentence without a subject.
>
> "Det var ikke det jeg hadde håpet at skulle skje"
> "That was not what I had hoped that would happen"
>

That's no jungle, unless you stick to your latin grammar. Basically
any NP can be promoted to first place out of any depth of nested
sentences.

> This kind of manipulations are amazingly frequent in spoken

Norwegian

> (at least in my dialect), and I think it is an acceptable
> construction in other Scandinavian languages as well.
>

Very much in Danish.

> A near analogic construction is the double-participle passives. But
> it exists primarily in formal written language. In this

construction

> an object of the subordinate verb is promoted to grammatical

subject

> of the main verb in the passive.
>
> "Tårnet ble vedtatt restaurert for åtte år siden"
> "The tower was decided restored eight years ago"
>
> I think this kind of sentences are ok in Danish

It doesn't sound quite right.

>but I am not sure
> with Swedish. I wonder if it is acceptable in German, this example

is

> actually taken from a discussion on wether it is found in German

and

> I was told by many that it wasn't.

Torsten