Comments on: *Following Sentence is Grammatical

By: k

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 11:54:28 +0000

The phrase is possible in Norwegian too (”Da sa han følgende setning: …”), although of course not without “følgende”. A quick look-up in the dictionary gives the following definition of “følgende”:

følgende
a3 denne, dette, disse; neste (med f- ord / f- modeller er utsolgt)
subst (i det f- skal vi … nå, i tiden som kommer / f- dag)

“denne, dette, disse” correspond to the English determiners “this (masc/fem), this (neuter), these”, and are here given as variant meanings of “følgende”…
in addition, the word is listed as a possible noun (”substantiv”), but that might just be because it can act as the head of a determiner phrase that doesn’t have a noun, the same way that other Norwegian determiners can:

Da sa han denne setningen: …
Da sa han dette: …
Da sa han den følgende setningen: …
Da sa han følgende setning: …
Da sa han følgende: …

The position after “han” can be filled with a DP or an NP, where the DP has many optional subphrases. I could give you a good reference, but unfortunately it’s in Norwegian

By: strossel

strossel — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 06:43:07 +0000

Hello, this is my first post. Your blog is very interesting.

I am sure that Swedish has something to say about demonstrative use of determiners, but I cannot quite form together an explanation on my own, as I am not a native speaker.

I will do a little more reading to arrange my thinking.. but perhaps you would like to look in the direction of the Swedish 'double definite', and its system of definite-ness.

Demonstrative determiners are to be found!

By: Susi

Susi — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 20:17:51 +0000

The determiner drop seems to be generally possible when referring meta-linguistically to things mentioned right before or after. It’s also very common with ‘ersterer’, ‘letzterer’ as in:

“Ich habe Peter, Hans und Karl vor kurzem getroffen. Ersterer lebt jetzt in Wien, zweiterer ist verheiratet, und letzterer ist ein Pfarrer.” [I recently met with Peter, Hans, and Karl. The first mentioned..., the second one..., the last one..."]. In all these cases, the definite determiner is possible as well.

By: if

if — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 01:21:30 +0000

A definite determiner can also be added in the examples with ’said’ I posted earlier. For example (from Google):

“It is provided in Article XII of the said Agreement that it shall enter into force on the date of exchange of written notices of acceptance by the Governments of the United States of America and the Socialist Republic of Romania.

By: fintel

fintel — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 18:59:51 +0000

In the example I cite, you could add a definite determiner. In general -- although not in the accusative case as here -- the adjective/demonstrative will have a different morphology depending on whether there is a preceding definite determiner. Here's a nominative example from the web:

Dem ersten Absatz wird folgender Satz angefügt: ... to-the first paragraph becomes following sentence added: ...

We could add a definite determiner:

Dem ersten Absatz wird der folgende Satz angefügt: ...

Note that the ending of the adjective is different.

By: tonymarmo

tonymarmo — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 18:50:30 +0000

The required syntactic testing for German requires that you check whether the definite determiner can be placed before the bare singular or not.

By: fintel

fintel — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 21:54:02 +0000

Very nice. Yes, that does seem quite similar.

By: if

if — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 21:06:10 +0000

Could “said” be a case in point? Example from Google:

“In connection therewith, Rep. Villafuerte cited for the record that under said agreement entered into by Secretary Gonzales, it is specifically provided that “Venable will be required by US law to register with the US Department of Justice this agreement which registration must include a copy of this agreement and which is available to the public.” In other words, he said that there is nothing secret about said agreement. He asked whether this contention is correct.”