Language Mixing in American Norwegian Noun Phrases

Abstract

This article investigates the morphosyntax of American Norwegian noun phrases that show mixing between Norwegian and English and proposes a formal analysis of these. The data show a distinct pattern characterized by English content items occurring together with Norwegian functional material such as determiners and suffixes. In the article, it will be argued that an exoskeletal approach to grammar is ideally suited to capture this empirical pattern. This framework crucially separates the realization of functional and non-functional terminals in an abstract, syntactic structure. Insertion of functional exponents is restricted by feature matching, whereas insertion into non-functional terminals is radically less restrictive. English exponents for noun stems are thus easily inserted into open positions in the structure, whereas functional exponents are typically drawn from Norwegian, as these are better matches to feature bundles comprising definiteness, number, and gender. In addition to the typical mixing pattern, the article addresses an unexpected empirical phenomenon, the occurrence of the English plural -s, and proposes a possible analysis for this using the exoskeletal framework. The formal analysis of American Norwegian noun phrases also exemplifies how an exoskeletal approach complies with the ideal of a Null theory of language mixing.