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Chapter 4
Functional Gains: A Cross-Linguistic Case Study of Three Particles in Swedish,
Norwegian and German
Lena Ekberg, Toril Opsahl and Heike Wiese
Introduction
Contemporary urban multilingual settings in Europe lead to rich sources of language contact
involving the majority languages and a range of typologically diverse minority languages,
such as Arabic, Urdu, Turkish, Kurdish, Croatian and Sranan. The linguistic outcomes of
these settings may result in the emergence of what we in the following refer to as (see
Rampton, this volume). By choosing this label, we make clear that this is a way of speaking
related not to a particular ethnicity, but rather to contemporary urban areas in Europe (see
also Cornips, Jaspers and De Rooij, this volume, for a discussion of terms such as ‘ethnolect’,
which assume pre-existing social categories such as ‘ethnicity’).
Multilingual urban settings constitute a linguistic environment that is particularly
open to linguistic variation and , and might also support a faster pace of language change – in
comparison not only to national standard varieties that are more restricted by normative
processes, but also compared to informal varieties and styles that are set in more
monoethnic/monolingual speech communities and that cannot draw on this kind of language
diversity. This linguistic dynamics makes contemporary urban vernaculars particularly
interesting for investigations that target the linguistic system and the interactions of different
grammatical and extragrammatical subsystems in the emergence of new patterns. This
chapter is devoted to a case study from this domain that brings together similar lexical items
from three Germanic languages, namely Swedish Norwegian and German (‘such (a)’). We
will show that these items can be used in a similar way across the three languages as
grammatical and pragmatic markers, building on a pattern of semantic bleaching and
functional gain.
The rationale underlying our choice of study is the fact that the accumulation of
studies on linguistic developments in urban multilingual settings over the last decades (see
Svendsen and Nortier, this volume; Quist and Svendsen 2010; Wiese 2009) has cleared the
Authors’ copy; final version in: Jacomine Nortier & Bente
A. Svendsen (eds.) (2015), Language, Youth and Identity
in the 21st Century. Linguistic Practices Across Urban
Spaces. Cambridge University Press, pp.93-115.
ground for a stage where we are now able to investigate in different urban settings across
Europe: the time is ripe to make the step from studies across Europe to cross-European
studies.
This has the potential to reveal general tendencies of language variation and change
reflected in these new linguistic developments, and by doing so, will also emphasize another
important aspect for the understanding of contemporary multilingual urban settings. The
studies performed so far have provided us with valuable insight into the complexities
associated with a multicultural and multilingual urban reality. However, one aspect we wish
to highlight is that in addition to the advantageous environment that multilingual speech
communities provide for language change, there might also be a perceptual advantage in the
salience of these phenomena in such communities. The (relatively) recent attention given to
contemporary spoken urban vernaculars – among linguists, the media and the general public
alike – may have put a spotlight on phenomena that might be first observed here, but perhaps
constitute instances of more general cases of . Some of the linguistic traits associated with
contemporary urban vernaculars are not necessarily restricted to multiethnic urban areas, and
in some cases might not even be significantly more widespread here than in more
monolingual settings.
Ekberg (2010: 29) poses an important question: could it be that the foreign-sounding
way of speaking Swedish that is associated with the multiethnic speech style described in
Malmö known as ‘, triggers the listener to search for (other) nonstandard traits? If we include
the researcher in the group of listeners pointed to by Ekberg in her question, we approach
another explanation for our choice of object of study. The following presentation of some of
the grammatical aspects associated with contemporary urban vernaculars in , and reveals
interesting parallels, but we also find examples of characteristic linguistic traits that may not
be restricted to multilingual settings per se. This is especially true when we turn to
phenomena associated with the grammar–pragmatics interface. These facts do not undermine,
but rather reinforce the importance of examining the special linguistic dynamics at play in
urban multiethnic areas, as we will show in the next section.
In the introduction to this volume we saw how a linguistic-anthropologic viewpoint
reveals how language form, practices and ideologies may be understood as interwoven
phenomena, and how various aspects must be taken into consideration if one wants to grasp
the “total linguistic fact”. A cross-linguistic viewpoint as employed here, that covers related
grammatical phenomena arising in parallel urban environments, may contribute to a further
understanding of these issues, especially so in combination with studies carried out from an
interactional point of view (cf. Part III, this volume). At a meta-level of identity and us-them
categories, our study contributes to “normalis[ing] the kind of urban speech we are
examining, moving it out of the ‘marked’ margins” (Rampton 2013:78): as we show here, the
developments we find in new urban vernaculars are not idiosyncratic or alien to the linguistic
domain of the respective majority languages, but part and parcel of the variation we find
there. They are embedded in the range of options we find, in our case, for Swedish,
Norwegian, and German, respectively, in a way that defies a distinction of ‘allochthonous’
vs. ‘autochthonous’ varieties.
Linguistic Characteristics Associated with Contemporary Urban Vernaculars
In our study, we concentrate on three Germanic languages, namely Swedish, Norwegian and
German. This allows us to target three closely-related lexical elements with our analysis,
namely sån, sånn and so ‘such (a)’ (more on these elements in the following section), and to
investigate the strikingly parallel development they undergo cross-linguistically. Since, as we
will show below, the findings from this study point to general patterns of functionalization,
they will be relevant to other European linguistic settings as well, in particular given the
cross-linguistic similarities of contemporary urban vernaculars at a general level that have so
far emerged from different national studies (see also Wiese 2009).
In general, we can identify three patterns of development in contemporary urban
vernaculars: (1) , such as the emergence of new lexical loans from some of the background
languages available in the communities, (2) that arise from an extension of lexical material
or grammatical patterns offered by the respective majority languages, and (3) developments
that reflect phenomena of , such as the interaction of weaker grammatical constraints and a
more direct realization of information-structural preferences.
It is only in the first case that elements specific to particular background languages
come into play. In contrast to this, the other patterns are supported language-internally (either
from the point of view of particular majority languages, or from general linguistic
tendencies). This means that we can expect similar developments cross-linguistically, and
that contemporary urban vernaculars are not exotic, but rather form an integrated part of the
linguistic spectrum found within the majority languages.
An example of the first phenomenon is given in the German data in (1), where the
Arabic abu (‘father’, here as an abbreviation for more general insults involving the
addressee’s father) is used as an exclamation signaling displeasure, best translated into
English as ‘my!’
(1) (German)
Ben: aBU , war voll mies . er wird so geFOULT
my was really mean he got like fouled
‘My, it was really mean. He got, like, fouled.’
Innovative uses of lexical items are not only based on loan words from migrant languages,
but also on new or extended uses of existing linguistic material already present in other
varieties of the respective languages, realizing the second pattern mentioned above. In
Sweden, for instance, the tag du vet (‘you know’) – as can be seen twice in the Swedish
example (2) below – has been pointed to as characteristic for speakers in multiethnic areas in
Malmö (Svensson 2007), and is also observable in our Norwegian data (Opsahl 2009a: 140).
An elaboration and/or generalization of grammatical options offered by the linguistic system
of the majority languages can also be observed at the morpho-syntactic level. Examples of
this are some of the phenomena described by Kotsinas (1988a, b, 1996) for Swedish, such as
the elaboration of the domain and function of certain prepositions, or productive light verb
constructions in German (Wiese 2006). Yet another example of morpho-syntactic
characteristics is the emergence of new determiners, as described for instance by Ekberg
(2010), and visible in the Swedish example (2) (‘så var de(t) sån lite(n) bebis’), elaborated on
in the next section of this chapter. (Example (2), from Ekberg (2010: 18), is repeated with
more context in example (18) below.)
(2) (Swedish)
Gordana: i banken i fredags (.) så var de(t) sån lite(n) bebis (.)
in bank.the last Friday so was it sån little baby
asså du vet så jag ville bara ta du vet
well you know so I wanted just to.take you know
‘At the bank last Friday there was sån little baby’.
Well, you know, I just wanted to take [her], you know.’
A phenomenon that has been observed across Germanic V2 languages is new word order
options for the left periphery (cf. Ganuza 2010; Kern and Selting 2006; Opsahl 2009a;
Opsahl and Nistov 2010; Wiese 2009), which might be related to a more direct realization of
information-structural preferences (see Wiese 2011 for German and Freywald, Cornips,
Ganuza, Nistov and Opsahl, this volume, for further studies including Swedish and
Norwegian data). The Norwegian data in (3) give an example of such a new word order
option (‘Etterpå jeg skal ta’, Adv S V), together with an example of the absence of
definiteness marking on the NP (‘alle de brus’, where one would expect ‘all den brusen’ (-en
def) or ‘alle de brusene’ (-ene def pl)), in line with the second pattern identified above.
(3) (Norwegian)
Olav: etterpå jeg skal ta ALle de brus
afterwords I shall take all those sodas
‘Afterwords I’m gonna take all those sodas.’
Related to this pattern of extending existing grammatical options, multiethnic areas might
also support a faster pace of language change in general. In Oslo, for instance, this seems to
be the case regarding the apical pronunciation of the kj-sound, resulting in a – at least for
Norwegians well-known – merger of the two sounds kj- and skj- (Opsahl and Røyneland
2009). In Germany, a phenomenon known from youth language in general, namely the use of
voll (‘full’) as an intensifier, seems to be more widespread in multiethnic speech communities
(cf. Wiese, in press).
The characteristics we observe at lexical, morphological and syntactic levels are
supported by the particular linguistic dynamics of contemporary urban vernaculars. A large
number of speakers of such vernaculars have grown up with two or more languages, leading
to multilingual repertoires that encourage a higher linguistic flexibility than in monolingual
speakers. This does not, however, exclude monolingual speakers from using these features, or
from taking part in linguistic practices associated with a modern urban multicultural reality.
All the communities from whom our data is drawn include monolingual speakers of the
majority languages, and speakers use these features regardless of their language backgrounds.
The examples presented above and those elaborated on below are types of linguistic variation
that are not random deviations from (standard) majority languages, but rather constitute
coherent (sub-)systems of their own (see also Quist and Svendsen 2010). This point is
especially clear if we turn to the main focus of this chapter, the case of sån, sånn and so.
What is particularly interesting is that we find two similar functional developments for
elements with a common primary semantic meaning (‘comparison’) in a similar way across
the three languages under investigation. This suggests that what we observe here are not
idiosyncratic developments, but rather instances of general processes that support similar
patterns of functionalization in Germanic. These patterns are highlighted in multilingual
environments, but they are – as pointed out above – not restricted to them. Rather, what we
find here are options that are in principle available in a linguistic system and will also be
realized in other variants of informal language, if possibly less extensively in terms of
frequency or entrenchment.
Sån, Sånn, and So
In their original meaning, sån, sånn and so can be translated into English as ‘such a’/‘such’,
with an indexical modal meaning answering to ‘how’. Norwegian sånn and Swedish sån are
short forms of sådan, which originates in Plattdeutsch. In the standard varieties of Swedish
and Norwegian, sån/sånn are typically used as an attribute in an indefinite noun phrase (sån
säng ‘such [a] bed’), in Norwegian also as an adverb (as in du kan ikke gjøre sånn ‘you can’t
do like this!’). German so is a polyfunctional element that can be used as an adverb and also,
based on this, as a conjunction, and a complementizer, similar to Swedish and Norwegian så.
The usages as conjunction or complementizer build on the indexical lexical content (cf.
Wiese 2011).
In addition to their usage as content words, sån, sånn and so can also be used as
purely functional markers. In this usage, the original meaning of these elements is lost; they
undergo , trading content for function. It is this functional usage that we investigate in this
chapter. We have chosen these particular items for our case study on because they bring
together developments at two levels: (1) from a content word to a , namely to an element with
a determiner function, and (2) from a content word to a , namely to a focus marker. Let us
briefly make clear what we understand to be the outcome in the two cases.
(1) In speaking of an element ‘with a rather than outright of a ‘determiner’, we
account for the fact that these elements fulfill some, but not necessarily all functions that are
usually associated with determiners. (For a detailed discussion and overview, cf.
Himmelmann 2001.) In particular, they mark nominal elements, and, if one adopts the
syntactic perspective of a determiner phrase/DP, they can thus be understood to provide the
outer functional layer of noun phrases. Unlike articles, they do not mark the entire range of
morphological categories that a full determiner might indicate in the respective languages
(i.e., number, case, gender).
(2) By a ‘’ we understand an element whose co-constituent is a focus expression, that
is, an expression whose referent is focused at the level of information structure. This focusing
characteristically involves alternatives or contrasts, and hence can be understood as an
answer to an implicit or explicit question that requests a choice from a set of such alternatives
(cf. for instance Jackendoff 1972; Jacobs 1983; König 1991; Krifka 2007; Rooth 1985).
When speaking of ‘focus markers’, we refer to dedicated functional elements that support this
organization at the level of information structure, but that do not contribute any additional
semantic content. That is, we refer to what König (1991: 29) calls ‘pure’ focus markers, in
contrast to focus particles such as only, even or also that contribute their own restrictive,
scalar or additive semantics (cf. Horn 1996, König 1991 for a detailed analysis of only).
It should be noted that in Swedish, in addition to sån which is common among young
speakers in Malmö, another item that originates in a comparative expression, namely såhär,
can be used as a focus marker, in particular among adolescents in Stockholm. Såhär is a
fusion of a deictic expression, så här, idiomatically ‘like this’, where the first element, så
(‘so’), is a comparative-demonstrative adverb and the second, här (‘here’), a proximal
demonstrative. Såhär is also written sär, representing the assimilated pronunciation. A
Norwegian parallel to the Swedish såhär is the fact that Norwegian sånn is sometimes used
in combination with herre (a variant of her (‘here’)) and quite often with derre (a variant of
der (‘there’)) (Lie 2008: 87).1
In the present article, we demonstrate that for this field of cognates – sån/såhär, sånn
and so – we can observe a common pattern of functionalization that holds cross-linguistically.
This functionalization leads from lexical words with full semantics to semantically bleached
elements; that is, to elements that have lost their lexical semantics in favour of functional
gains. Specifically, lexical words are transformed here into functional elements with focus
marker and determiner functions. As we show below, the cognitive motivation of this
functionalization is a core meaning of comparison and deixis we find associated with the
lexical semantics on which the development builds.
Data
The findings we present in the following draw on three main empirical sources. The Malmö
corpus, the UPUS/Oslo corpus and the KiezDeutsch Korpus (KiDKo). The Swedish data,
1 It should be noted that sånn is quite frequent in spoken Norwegian and probably not restricted to particular
geographical areas. As the amount of spoken language corpora has increased, sånn has been the subject of
several studies from both functional and grammatical perspectives over the last few years. These are not
restricted to – and sometimes do not even include – multilingual speech communities (Lie 2008; Hasund et al.
2012; Johannessen 2012).
here referred to as the Malmö corpus, is part of a larger corpus collected within the realm of
the project Language and Language Use Among Young People in Multilingual Urban
Settings during the years 2002 and 2003 (cf. Boyd, Hoffman and Walker, this volume), an
elaborate collection of speech data that has become a well-established reference corpus for
contemporary urban vernaculars in Sweden.
The corpus consists of data collected in two upper secondary schools in Malmö. The
proportion of multilingual students differs between the schools, but in the classes from which
the participants were selected, the number of students with foreign background was similar,
approximately 65%.2 The data consists of spontaneous speech collected with no researcher or
other adult present. Either the participants took part in semi-directed group conversations at
school, or conducted self-recordings in situations they chose themselves, interacting with
peers. In both cases, the recordings were made on mini-discs. The present study is based on a
part of the Malmö corpus that comprises nearly 6 hours (≈ 46,000 tokens) of recorded speech
of participants from two peer groups. The first, referred to as the C group, consisted of four
bilingual students, whereas the other, the E group, consisted of three monolingual students. A
perception experiment showed that two of the participants in the C group were regarded as
speaking Rosengård Swedish, the local multiethnic variety, whereas two of the participants in
the E group were regarded as not speaking Rosengård Swedish (Bodén 2007; 2010; Hansson
and Svensson 2004). (The perception experiment included specimens of speech from all four
informants in the C group, and two of the three informants in the E group.) Thus, the Swedish
data referred to in this study very likely includes language use regarded as an instance of a
multiethnic variety, as well as language use not regarded as an instance of a multiethnic
variety.
The Norwegian data is primarily drawn from the UPUS-Oslo Corpus, a spoken
language corpus developed by the group of the UPUS-project (Utviklingsprosesser i urbane
språkmiljø – ‘Developmental processes in urban linguistic settings’). The aim of the Oslo
UPUS-project (2006-2010) was to explore linguistic practices among adolescents in
multilingual settings in Oslo and the possible emergence of so-called multiethnolectal speech
styles, from both structural and functional perspectives (see Svendsen and Røyneland 2008;
Opsahl 2009a and b; Aarsæther 2010; Opsahl and Nistov 2010).
Data was collected in the inner city district of Gamle Oslo, where the migrant
population – according to Statistics Norway – is 36%, and in the suburban city district of
2 That is, either the students themselves or at least one of their parents was born abroad.
Søndre Nordstrand, where the migrant population is 48%. The fifty-six adolescents who
participated in the study were between the ages of thirteen and nineteen, and they were all
born and raised in Oslo. The data consists of video-recorded peer conversations and
interviews, which typically took place at youth clubs in the adolescents’ neighbourhoods. A
few of them also provided the project with self-recordings. The transcripts were
automatically annotated with morphological information. The data is made available for
researchers through an Internet-based interface – where the transcripts, audio- and video files
are linked together – developed by Tekstlaboratoriet (‘The Text Laboratory’) at the Faculty
of Humanities, University of Oslo. At the time of writing, the database has not yet been
completed, i.e., there are still some transcripts and video files that need to be linked to the
interface. It is therefore not possible to provide the exact number of tokens in the corpus. An
estimate for the total duration of transcribed recordings is 30 hours.
For the German data, we draw mainly on the KiezDeutsch Korpus (KiDKo) (Wiese et
al. 2011), in addition to some data from listening-in situations and from interviews with
young people in multiethnic neighbourhoods of . This corpus has been compiled within
Project B6 (‘Kiezdeutsch’, 2008–2015, principal investigator H. Wiese) of the Special
Research Area (SFB) 632 Information Structure: The linguistic means for structuring
utterances, sentences and texts of University of Potsdam, Humboldt-University Berlin, and
Free University Berlin. KiDKo is a corpus of spontaneous, informal conversations between
adolescents in peer-group situations, conducted mostly in German. The corpus is based on
self-recordings of young people (fourteen to seventeen years of age) in Berlin. The recordings
(audio files) are accompanied by aligned transcriptions in XML format that will, in the future,
also have syntactic annotations (syntactic categories, phrases, topological fields). The corpus
uses EXMARaLDA (Extensible Markups Language for Discourse Annotation, cf. Schmidt
and Wörner 2005), a corpus system that allows automatic searches at all levels (transcription,
annotations, metadata on speakers and speech situations). The corpus consists of two parts.
The main corpus contains speech data from young people in Kreuzberg, a multiethnic and
multilingual neighbourhood of Berlin, with seventeen anchor speakers and approximately
260,000 tokens of transcribed recordings. Speakers are multilingual and monolingual, coming
from migrant (mostly Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish) as well as non-migrant (German)
backgrounds. The supplementary corpus contains data from young people in a community
that is mostly monoethnic but has similar socioeconomic indicators, Berlin-Hellersdorf, with
six anchor speakers and approximately 100,000 tokens of transcribed recordings. All
speakers in the supplementary corpus are of non-migrant, monolingual German background.
In the following section, we first present an analysis of the functional usages
observable here for sån/såhär, sånn and so, respectively. Against this background, the final
section will summarize our findings, highlighting commonalities and differences across the
three languages.
Functional Usages of Sån/Såhär, Sånn and So
The present section investigates the similar uses and parallel functionalization of the lexical
items Swedish sån/såhär, Norwegian sånn and German so. Semantically these items have a
common basis. In their primary lexical uses, sån, sånn and so have a comparative meaning,
along with a more or less salient deictic/demonstrative meaning. According to our data (see
Introduction), sån, sånn and so may function both as focus markers – pointing to the rhematic
element in the utterance, i.e. the element containing the new information – and as
determiners, as a substitution for the indefinite article. A telling example from the Norwegian
data of this dual function is given in (4), where the first instance of sånn is interpreted as
determiner-sånn and the second instance is interpreted as a pragmatic marker. In the first
instance, sånn is combined with the name of a (for Norwegians) well-known television
channel, which is introduced here, suggesting that sånn substitutes an indefinite article. In the
second instance, sånn is used to mark the rhematic element (kornåkerprogram
‘field.of.barley.programme’), while simultaneously signalling reservation regarding the
chosen linguistic form.
(4) Norwegian (Opsahl 2009a: 109):
Waqar: jeg så på sånn proGRAM på tvnorge (.)
I watched on sånn program on TVNorge
sånn KORnåkerprogram eller noe
sånn field.of.barley.program or something
‘I watched sånn program on TVNorway, sånn field of barley-program
or something.’
In addition, in Swedish, the element såhär (see Introduction) can also be used in a focus-
marking function. In the following, we will account for the usage of sån/såhär, sånn and so
as focus markers, and the usage of sån, sånn and so in a determiner function. As mentioned in
the Introduction, we argue that the core meaning of comparison and deixis is the cognitive
motivation of the semantic change of the three items. Against this background, we will
suggest a possible path of development from lexical to functional usages at pragmatic and
morphosyntactic levels.
Sån/Såhär, Sånn, and So as focus markers
The particles sån/såhär, sånn and so have all been attested in a focus-marking function in
informal, spoken varieties of Swedish, Norwegian and German, respectively; cf. (5)–(7). In
this function they are unstressed, and precede the expression carrying the main stress. While
the German so is fully semantically bleached (it has lost all of its lexical semantic content)
and non-referential in this usage, Swedish sån/såhär and Norwegian sånn retain some of their
primary comparative/deictic meaning (Ekberg 2010; Johannessen 2012).
(5) Swedish (Ekberg 2010: 23):
a. Bodil: hon ville inte ha mej där bak (.) asså jag var sån (.)
busfrö (.)
she wanted not to.have me there back you.know I was sån
little.devil
när jag var liten (.) jag var sån BUse.
when I was little I was sån pest
‘She didn’t want me to sit at the back [of the room] because I was sån
little devil when I was a kid. I was sån pest.’
b. Daniella: men de(t) e såhär roliga ORD som kommer ibland
but it is såhär funny words that come sometimes
‘but it is såhär funny words that occur sometimes’
(6) Norwegian (Opsahl 2009a: 109):
Aud-Jeanette: i morgen må jeg på sånn konfirmaSJONSkurs
in morning must I on sånn confirmation.class
‘Tomorrow, I have to attend sånn confirmation class.’
(7) German (Wiese 2011: 992):
Angela: das sieht so INdisch aus
that looks so Indian vpart
‘That looks so Indian.’
While sån/såhär, sånn and so alike can take on the function of a focus marker, the range in
which they can do so seems to be different in the three languages. The focus-marking
function appears to be most elaborated in German, where we find evidence of so used both to
mark information focus, as in (7) above, and to mark contrastive focus, cf. (8) (from Wiese
2011: 993):
(8) Stefanie: die ist für die NACHT , und diese so für TAGSüber so .
this is for the night and this.one so for day.over so
‘This one is for the night, and this one, for daytime.’
In comparison to the German data, there is less collected data in Swedish and Norwegian of
sån/sånn as a focus marker. The existing data do however indicate a function similar to
German so: sån and sånn are used to point to the rhematic element in an utterance, cf. (5) and
(6) above. However, some of the examples found in the Swedish and the Norwegian corpora
are difficult to analyze in regard to the pragmatic function, due to the overlapping function of
sån/sånn as a determiner. Sån/sånn are also unstressed in a determiner function, and may
precede a noun phrase that receives the main stress. For instance, in the Norwegian example
in (6), sånn is interpreted as a determiner with a certain pragmatic content. Sånn often
conveys an element of reservation towards the chosen linguistic form or to the proposition
uttered, and invites the hearer to cooperate by mobilizing socially-shared knowledge in order
to arrive at an interpretation of the following constituent. This ability has inspired
Johannessen (2012) to call sånn a modal determiner. The pragmatic function of reservation is
rather clear in the phrase sånn kornåkerprogram (‘such field.of.barley.program’) in (4),
above. It may also to some extent be said to be present in (6), but in this case the pragmatic
content is bleached, and we are approaching a situation where sånn is seemingly a substitute
for the indefinite article.
Likely cases of a pure pragmatic function occur when sån/sånn do not agree with the
following noun, as in the Norwegian examples in (9) (from Opsahl 2009a: 109). In (9), the
second noun område ‘area’ is neuter, whereas sånn is used in its common gender (the same
holds for the Swedish example in (5), above, where the noun busfrö is neuter while sån is
used in its common gender). In (9b), sånn, which is singular, is followed by a noun in plural.
The non-congruent form can be taken as an indication that sån/sånn are not part of the noun
phrase (Lie 2008), thus functioning as a pragmatic particle rather than as a determiner (this is
also the position taken in Ekberg 2011).
(9) a. Roger: det er sånn som SUpermann (.) bare løper rundt på sånn
stor område
it is sånn like superman just running around on sånn
big area
‘It is just like Supermann, just running around in sånn big area.’
b. Anders: prøve å bruke mest sånn verDIfulle ord enn sånn
TOMme ord
try to use mostly sånn valuable words than sånn
öempty words
‘Try to use more, like, valuable words than, like, empty words.’
Wiese (2009, 2011) proposes a path of the German so, leading from the propositional core
meaning of comparison, via a semantically-bleached meaning of vagueness – so denoting a
generalized kind – to a function as a genuine focus marker, devoid of semantic content. As a
vagueness marker, so may be used for hedging. Hypothetically, the crucial transitional phase
from a lexical element to a focus marker is when so is used pragmatically as a hedging
device. As hedging is most relevant in relation to information-heavy constituents, so will
frequently co-occur with focus expressions, which, as Wiese argues, ‘make[s] it likely for it
to be reinterpreted as a focus marker’ (2011: 1021).
The examples in (10) illustrate the dual function of so as a focus marker and as an
element used for hedging (Wiese 2011: 1022). In (10a), which is taken from a monolingual
German context,3 this is further indicated by the preceding item irgendwie (‘somehow’); in
(10b), which is taken from the multiethnic part of the KiDKo corpus (a discussion of an
ongoing football match), the epistemic ‘I have a feeling’ sets up a suitable context for
hedging. By bringing together both options for so, (10) exemplifies an ambiguous context
necessary for a reinterpretation of so as a focus marker; that is, a context that is ambiguous
3 A TV discussion of literature, from the DWDS corpus of spoken and written German. DWDS (Digitales
Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache des 20. Jahrhunderts), ‘Digital Lexicon of German in the Twentieth
Century’, Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science: Corpus Gesprochene Sprache ‘Spoken Language’,
encompassing transcripts from the twentieth century with app. 2.5 million tokens. The speaker is Iris Radisch, a
German literature journalist.
between focus and hedging, and can thus support transitions from one interpretation to the
other.
(10) a. Das mag originell sein
that might original be
und das mag irgendwie so einen Kieztouch haben
and that might somehow so a hood.touch have
‘That might be original and might have a neighbourhood feel to it
somehow.’
b. Merdan: ich hab so das geFÜHL, die erste HALBzeit kein tor, JA?
I have so the feeling the first half.time no goal yes
‘I somehow have the feeling there won’t be a goal in the first
half, right?’
Swedish sån and Norwegian sånn may also be used as devices in combination with marking
the new information, as illustrated in (4), above, where the second instance of sånn signals
reservation with regard to the linguistic form of the focused expression. See also the example
in (13), below, where sån is used both as a determiner and as a hedging device. For Swedish
and Norwegian sån/sånn, we can thus assume a developmental path as for focus-marking
German so.
Evidence for the possible reinterpretation of a semantically full usage of comparatives
as focus markers comes from a novel usage of the German term Ausdruck in multiethnic
speech communities in Berlin (and quite possibly elsewhere). In its conventional usage,
Ausdruck means ‘expression’ / ‘word’ and as such is a neutral term.4 In the examples below,
however, it has taken on a negative semantic feature, meaning something like ‘bad
expression’ / ‘swear word’, cf. (11) (from informal interviews in Berlin-Kreuzberg):
(11) a. Cennet: wir solln hier keine AUSdrücke benutzen
we shall here no expressions use
‘We are not to use swear words here.’
4 Accordingly, this neutral usage, without any negative semantic components, is what one finds for example in
the DWDS (‘Digital Lexicon of German in the Twentieth Century’, Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences).
b. Nico: dann kam schon wieder n AUSdruck
then came already again an expression
‘Then, there was yet another swear word.’
The new meaning for Ausdruck might derive from such contexts as in (12): teachers
admonishing children and adolescents not to use swear words (at kindergarten or school)
frequently do so by telling them not to use ‘such expressions’, as illustrated in (12).
(12) Benutz hier nicht {solche Ausdrücke / so einen Ausdruck}!
use here not such5 expressions so an expression
‘Do not use such expressions / such an expression here!’
In such contexts, the comparative (‘such’) stands adjacent to the focus-carrying expression,
Ausdruck, which receives main sentence stress. In this position, solch (‘such’) might be
reinterpreted as a focus marker. As such, solch would lose its semantic content in favour of
functionalization, and as a result, Ausdruck alone would then be the term for ‘swear word’.
A parallel case to the use and development of sån/sånn/so is English like, which has a
similar comparative lexical meaning and may function as a focus marker (e.g., Underhill
1988: 234). There is, however, a further parallel. Romaine and Lange (1991) distinguish an
additional use of like, namely the function as a quotative, which is hypothesized to be
developed from its use as focus marker (see also Ferrara and Bell 1995; Tagliamonte and
Hudson 1999). In addition to their use as focus markers, Norwegian sånn, German so and
sporadically Swedish såhär are used as quotative markers as well (Ekberg 2011; Golato
2000; Hasund et al. 2012; Opsahl and Svennevig 2012). As they are not restricted to reported
speech, but are used for dramatized events as well (Golato 2000; Hasund et al. 2012). A
further parallel example of from a focus marker to a quotative is Swedish ba (Eriksson
1997). Ba is a reduced form of bara with the lexical meaning ‘only; just’. The same
development has been decribed in Norwegian, but the Norwegian quotative is used in a non-
reduced form, bare (Opsahl and Svennevig 2007, 2012).
Sån, Sånn, and So as
5 Solch (‘such’) is the counterpart of so that is used with plural nouns in standard German. (In informal varieties,
in particular in northern Germany, one also finds a plural form sone- of so, where a plural suffix -e is attached to
the form son- that initially derives from so with a cliticized indefinite article; see next section).
In colloquial Swedish, Norwegian and German, in particular in multilingual urban contexts,
we also find evidence of sån, sånn and so used in a determiner function; that is, in positions
where they seemingly act as substitutes for the (Ekberg 2007; 2010; 2011; Opsahl 2009a;
Wiese 2006). The use of Swedish sån as a determiner seems however to be restricted to the
south of Sweden; it has for example not been attested in Stockholm (approximately 600
kilometres north of Malmö).
In the standard varieties of Swedish, Norwegian and German, an indefinite
determiner, or a quantifier, must precede a singular count noun phrase. When no quantifier is
present, the indefinite article is obligatory when the noun phrase has argumental status. In the
Swedish corpus, there is a strong tendency to leave out the obligatory indefinite article en/ett
(‘a/an’) in a noun phrase with sån (for details see Ekberg 2011). Consider the example in (13)
where the singular indefinite NP lacks the article en. In Standard Swedish, sån NP would be
preceded by en, that is, en sån NP (‘a such NP’) or merely construed as en NP (‘an NP’).
Parallel examples for Norwegian and German are given in (14) and in (15).
(13) Swedish:
Gordana: du vet jag har sån ee säng
you know I have sån eh bed
‘I have sån bed, you know.’
Sabaah: mm
Gordana: du vet sån ee (.) med sån fjärrkontroll (.)
you know sån eh with sån remote-control
så du vet man kan
so you know one can
flytta upp den (.) åå (.) så man kan (.)
move up it and so one can
så du vet man kan flytta upp sängen å sånt du vet
so you know one can move up bed.the and such you know
‘You know sån, with sån remote control, you know, you can move it
up, and then you can, you know, you can move up the bed and all that,
you know.’
(14) Norwegian (Opsahl 2009a: 109):
Waqar: jeg så på sånn proGRAM på tvnorge (.)
I watched on sånn programme on TVNorge
sånn KOrnåkerprogram eller noe
sånn field.of.barley.programme or something
‘I watched sånn program on TVNorway, sånn field of barley-
programme or something.’
(15) German (Wiese 2006: 256):
Marcel: ich such nicht so AUSbildungsplatz, ich such RICHtige arbeit
I look.for not so trainee.position I look.for real work
‘I am not looking for so trainee position, I am looking for a real job.’
The primary meaning of Swedish and Norwegian sån/sånn is to compare two referents
concerning type; in the Swedish example in (16) the comparand (B) serving to identify the
comparee (A) is expressed in a relative clause introduced by som (‘as’).
(16) Jag vill ha [en sån klänning]A [som den i fönstret]B.
I want to.have a such dress as the.one in window.the
‘I want to have a dress such as the one in the window.’
The meaning of comparison is central also of German so, where the object of comparison (B)
can be either explicit (introduced by wie (‘how’/‘as’)) or implicit (Wiese 2011: 996):
(17) [Annas Hund]A ist so groβ [wie ein Kalb]B / …ist so groβ. [pointing]
Anna’s dog is so big as a calf is so big
‘Anna’s dog is as big as a calf / … is this big.’
The meaning of sån/sånn/so is not only comparative, but also deictic/demonstrative; the
speaker is pointing to B, linguistically and/or physically, in order to denote A. As the
comparand is needed to identify the designated entity, the comparand is part of the
(immediate) semantic scope of sån (Langacker 1990).
Formally, sån/sånn/so replace the indefinite article in (13)–(15). The question is
whether they also fulfil the function of introducing a new discourse referent. We will
demonstrate this reasoning by looking closely at Swedish sån with a determiner function.
As pointed out by Heine (1997: 72), an early developmental stage of indefinite articles
is the use as a presentative marker to introduce a new discourse participant presumed to be
unknown to the listener. One of the contexts in the Swedish corpus where sån occurs without
an indefinite article is precisely as part of a noun phrase, that is, the logical subject of a
presentational construction, as is shown in (18). Here, the informant is telling her friends
what happened when she was at the bank the other day, namely that she saw a cute little
baby. She introduces the new discourse referent (the baby) by construing it as the logical
subject in a presentational construction (var de(t) sån lite(n) bebis, ‘there was sån little
baby’).
(18) Gordana: asså när jag var i bibl+ (.) ee var i banken i fredags (.)
well when I was in libr+ eh was in bank.the last Friday (.)
så var de(t) sån lite(n) bebis
so was it sån little baby
asså du vet så jag ville bara ta du vet som å (.)
well you know so I wanted just to.take you know like and
ta henne å krama henne
to.take her and hug her
‘When I was at the libr-, was at the bank last Friday, there was
sån little baby, well, you know, I just wanted to take [her], you
know, like, to take her and hug her.’
However, a closer look at the examples in (13) and (18) indicates that sån is semantically and
functionally more complex than the indefinite article. Consider again the example in (13),
where sån is used for the first mention of the referent säng ‘bed’, that is, for introducing a
new discourse referent. In Ekberg (2007; 2010; 2011) the use of sån in (13) is analyzed as
having a recognitional function (cf. Diessel 1999; Himmelmann 1996; 1997; Lindström
2000; Sacks and Schegloff 1979). The speaker introduces a new referent in the current
discourse that is construed as known to the listener.6 The Norwegian data (Opsahl 2009a)
indicates that the same analysis can be applied to sånn in a determiner function, cf. (19)
(example (6) from above is repeated here as (19c)):
6 A parallel case is when a demonstrative is used in the initial mention of a noun phrase, introducing a referent
that is new in the current discourse (cf. Himmelmann 1996: 230).
(19) a. Lukas: det er sånn fin FOTball
it is sånn nice football
‘It is sånn nice football.’
b. Roger: man kan vinne sånn KAmera
one may win sånn camera
‘One may win sånn camera.’
c. Aud-Jeanette: i morgen må jeg på sånn konfirmaSJONskurs
in morning must I on sånn confirmation.class
‘Tomorrow, I have to attend sånn confirmation class.’
More specifically, when using sån/sånn the speaker is referring to a referent that she assumes
the listener is able to identify through shared knowledge and experience. Sån points to an
imagined comparand needed to identify the comparee (the referent). The characteristics of the
referent are then successively elaborated in the continuation of the discourse (cf. the second
utterance from Gordana in (13)). This cataphoric use of determiner sån is equal to the one
observed in the Norwegian example in (14), where the first instance of sånn points forward to
the more precise mention of the introduced NP. The construal of the new referent as
something known is supported by the co-occurrence of the pragmatic particle du vet (‘you
know’), which emphasizes the closeness between speaker and listener while construing a
common frame of reference (Svensson 2007). In the recognitional use of sån, the
deictic/demonstrative meaning inherent in the primary comparative use has thus been
extended to the mental domain.
At the same time, both Swedish sån and Norwegian sånn are used for hedging in their
recognitional function. In (13) and (14), the speaker ‘asks’ for cooperation in denoting the
specific referent when using sån/sånn to point at an imagined type of referent (Ekberg 2011).
Also when used as a quotative (see the former section), Norwegian sånn functions as a means
to encourage the listener to imagine a type of event in order to understand or visualize the
specific event (Opsahl and Svennevig 2012, see also Johannessen 2012). In contrast to the
primary use, the immediate scope of sån/sånn NP includes only one entity, the comparee (the
referent). However, we propose that the comparand is part of what Langacker (1990) refers to
as the maximal scope, since when using recognitional sån, the speaker is referring to an
imagined comparand, necessary to identify the designated entity.
To conclude, the comparative meaning of sån/sånn is also present, although
backgrounded, in its function as a determiner. In (18), for example, sån lite(n) bebis (‘sån
little baby’) is construed as a type of baby known to the listener, although the referent is not
previously mentioned and is presumably unknown. In other words, sån/sånn refers to an
indefinite entity, belonging to a type of entity that is construed as known to the listener. The
overall indefinite meaning thus comprises a definite element arising from the conception of (a
known) type inherent in sån/sånn.
Interestingly, the use of German so with a determiner function again seems to parallel
the use of sån/sånn in regard to this complex meaning. This holds both for the basic form so
and for an extended form son- that derives from so combined with a cliticized indefinite
article (and accordingly can undergo inflection). Hole and Klumpp (2000) described son as a
new determiner in spoken, informal German that, parallel to the findings we report here for
sån/sånn, simultaneously denotes definite type reference and indefinite token reference.
The comparative/deictic meaning of sån/sånn/so is hypothesized to be retained in the
function as a determiner. In their lexical use, the items in question point to an (explicit or
implicit) object of comparison; in their functional use, the act of pointing is extended to the
level of discourse: sån/sånn/so pointing to an imagined type of referent needed to identify the
indefinite instance of the type. The pointing is simultaneously a means to create joint
attention of the referent that is being construed and denoted. When using sån/sånn/so, the
speaker invites the listener to co-construct the referent (Ekberg 2011). Consider again the
example in (14), where the speaker introduces a new discourse referent
(‘field.of.barley.programme’) via the mention of a type referent (‘programme’). The use of
sånn as a determiner to introduce the adequate token referent – the second instance of sånn in
(14) – is thus also an instance of hedging.
We hypothesize that the contextual coexistence of recognitional meaning and
pragmatic hedging on the one side, and the introduction of a new discourse referent on the
other (as in the examples in (13), (14), and (18)) triggers the reanalysis of a lexical
(comparative/deictic) item into a grammatical item (see Traugott and Dasher 2002). The
grammatical determiner function is an invited inference arising from the regular association
of the recognitional use of sån/sånn/so to introduce a new discourse referent.
In the previous section, we proposed that German so has developed from a
comparative lexical item to a focus marker via its function as a hedging device. Thus,
hedging may be the common trigger, or transitional phase, from a lexical comparative use to
either a pragmatic or a grammatical (morphosyntactic) use. The cognitive motivation for the
semantic change however lies in the inherent and (type-) of sån/sånn/so, since pointing to an
imagined comparand is crucial for the type meaning that gives rise to the function of focus
marker as well as determiner.
Conclusions
Taken together, the phenomena we discuss in this chapter point to striking parallels in the
development of sån, sånn and so. From a similar lexical basis with a deictic comparative
meaning, they undergo functionalizations leading to similar pragmatic and grammatical
usages, namely that of focus markers and of elements with determiner functions, respectively,
and these functional gains involve two similar patterns of loss in the semantic domain.
As pragmatic focus markers, sån, sånn and so undergo semantic bleaching that leads
to a complete (in the case of so) or at least partial (for sån and sånn) loss of semantic content
in favour of a pragmatic function that targets the level of information structure. As the
linguistic evidence in the previous section showed, this bleaching reduces the deictic power
present in the initial, lexical usage, whose semantic contribution can be paraphrased as ‘of
this kind’, leading to a weaker, more general meaning ‘of a/some kind’, or even to a complete
disposal of semantic content.
In the development of a grammatical item, sån, sånn and so undergo a different kind
of semantic loss, which however is again similar across languages: in this case, what we saw
was not so much a reduction, but rather a backgrounding of deictic power, based on its
relocation to the discourse level. This relocation allows the speaker to introduce a new
referent, identifiable by the listener through shared knowledge, through an implicit or
imagined comparand for the referent. This kind of ‘recognitional’ usage supports a
grammatical usage of sån, sånn and so in the place of indefinite articles, that is, with a
determiner function.
Table 1 brings together these two different, and shared, paths for sån, sånn and so,
from comparative deictics to functional elements at the pragmatic or grammatical level:
Please insert Figure 1 here.
Figure 1: Two common paths of functionalization for sån, sånn and so
These findings underline a view of developments in contemporary urban vernaculars not as
mere simplifications, but as systematic patterns that result in elaborations, in this case in the
rise of pragmatic and grammatical function words. While some salient linguistic phenomena
from multiethnic speech communities might at first glance appear as unsystematic reductions
such as ‘lack of articles’ or ‘overuse of filler elements’ – and are often perceived as such in
the public discussion in particular – a closer look reveals systematic developments that build
on an interaction of semantic loss and functional gain. As such, these developments allow us
insights into possible routes from content words to function words and the semantic cuts that
pave the way. This receives further support from the fact that, as the examples in this chapter
have demonstrated, these developments are not restricted to multilingual speech
communities. They might be more salient or, in some cases, more widespread in these
contexts. However, they are not idiosyncratic to them, but can also be observed in other
informal linguistic contexts outside multiethnic speech communities.
Participating in and building on general developmental tendencies of the respective
majority languages, new urban vernaculars are embedded in the general linguistic domain
they establish, by a network of ties in different grammatical areas. In our example, we found
such ties, for instance, in the domain of quotative and hedging uses for sån, sånn and so, and
also in the use of so as a focus marker, which has been described for informal spoken variants
of German in general (Wiese 2009). This focus-marker usage seems to be more widespread
and possibly more systematic in multilingual speech communities, but it is not restricted to
them. As argued at the beginning of this chapter, we see this as an indication for the
integration of such new urban vernaculars into the linguistic domain of the respective
majority languages. From this perspective, we should expect a substantial amount of overlap
with other, standard and nonstandard, variants, rather than restricting our approach to these
new vernaculars to features we consider outside the range of ‘autochthonous’ varieties.7
Urban vernaculars, with their multilingual speech communities and the special
linguistic dynamics that they espouse, put the spotlight on new linguistic developments,
thereby providing us with a unique opportunity to observe and investigate such phenomena.
They are, however, no strangers to the linguistic landscape in which they emerge. Rather, we
find in these vernaculars possible variations on a common theme of linguistic innovations
7Thelatterseemstobeaperspectiveimplied,forinstance,byAuer(2013),whoprovidesfurtherdatain
supportofWiese’s(2009,2012)findingsoffocusmarkingsoinGermanoutsidemultiethnicKiezdeutsch,and
claimsonthisbasisthat“thisusageofsoissimplynotkiezdeutsch”(Auer2013:29).
that might follow the same patterns across languages, and might be found in other standard
and nonstandard varieties as well.
Appendix
Notes on Transcriptions and Glossings:
capitalization – marks main sentence stress
bold – marks elements that are emphasized in the analysis
(.) – pause
+ – incomplete word
(t) – standard ortographic addition
ee – marks hesitation
vpart – verb particle
def – definiteness marker
pl – plural
Background Information on the Speakers:
Speakers in the Swedish examples (in alphabetical order, by pseudonyms):
Bodil: monolingual Swedish; born in Sweden to parents of Swedish background
Gordana: bilingual Swedish/Bosnian; came to Sweden at the age of eight, parents of
Bosnian background
Märta: monolingual Swedish; born in Sweden to parents of Swedish background
Sabaah: bilingual Swedish/Arabic; born in Sweden to parents of Syrian background
Speakers in the Norwegian examples (in alphabetical order, by pseudonyms):
Anders: born in Norway; one parent of Norwegian, one of North-African background
(claims to be a speaker of ‘the minority’s dialect’)
Aud-Jeanette: multilingual Norwegian/Tagalog/English; born in Norway, one parent of
Norwegian background, one of Philippine background
Lukas: multilingual, born to parents of Ethiopian background
Olav: monolingual Norwegian; born in Norway to parents of Norwegian background
Roger: monolingual Norwegian; born in Norway to parents of Norwegian background
Waqar: multilingual Norwegian/Urdu/Punjabi/English; born in Norway to parents of
Pakistani background
Speakers in the German examples (in alphabetical order, by pseudonyms):
Angela: monolingual German; born in Germany to parents of German and Italian
background
Ben: bilingual Thai/German; born in Germany to parents of Thai background
Cennet: bilingual Turkish/German; born in Germany to parents of Turkish background
Jessica: monolingual German; born in Germany to parents of German background
Merdan: multilingual Kurdish/Turkish/Arabic/German; born in Germany to parents of
Kurdish/Turkish background
Nico: monolingual German; born in Germany to parents of German background
Stefanie: monolingual German; born in Germany to parents of German background
