A study of modified noun phrases in the Bryggen in Bergen runic material and other Old Norwegian sources

Abstract

This thesis examines the runic inscriptions of Bryggen in Bergen as well as the Old Norwegian corpus currently consisting of four texts in the Menotec corpus of Old Norwegian, with regard to modified noun phrases. The relevant noun phrases in the Bryggen in Bergen corpus are glossed and, along with the relevant output from the Old Norwegian corpus, they are gathered into tables and statistics are drawn and contrasted to other, existing research on Old Icelandic. The thesis is a part of the project Constraints on syntactic variation: Noun phrases in early Germanic languages project (NFR 261847) and carries out research for the initial stages of the project, to examine the empirical distribution of noun phrases. The aim of this thesis is to draw up potential patterns in Old Norwegian with regard to the word order in modified noun phrases, with a focus on noun phrases containing a noun and an adjective or a noun and a possessive (possessive pronoun and reflexive possessive). While in the Bryggen in Bergen inscriptions, the statistics concern all noun phrases with a common noun and a complement that is not an epithet or apposition, in the Old Norwegian corpus, only the noun phrases with a common noun and an adjective or a common noun and a possessive (possessive pronoun or reflexive possessive) are considered.