Distributive Possessors in Swedish and Norwegian: Binding, Agreement, and Quantification

Abstract

The Scandinavian languages employ an unusual device for expressing distance distributivity: they make use of prenominal distributive possessors. These distributive elements appear, at least historically, to be composed of a distributive quantifier and a reflexive possessor. All Scandinavian languages have distributive possessors, but they display some interesting differences across language varieties. Two varieties from Norwegian and Swedish are specifically considered here. We outline similarities and differences between the distributive possessors having to do with agreement, (in-)definiteness, binding, and other linguistically significant properties. We suggest that their interpretive similarities follow from the assumption that they both have the semantics of Skolemized Choice Functions; this assumption makes sense of the fact that they are interpreted as indefinites and as bound variables. We furthermore argue that their main morphosyntactic differences boil down to whether the distributive expression consists of two lexical items or one, following an idea in Vangsnes (2002a, 2002b). Specifically, we propose that the differences follow from the assumption that the Norwegian distributive possessor is a syntactically more complex DP than the Swedish one (the Norwegian variant contains an additional QP that hosts the distributive element).