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Svenskans obestämda plurala artikel ena: Lexikon, syntax och pragmatik
Halmstad University, School of Education, Humanities and Social Science.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-2047-1523
Malmö universitet, Malmö, Sverige.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-0731-362X
2022 (Swedish)In: Språk och stil, ISSN 1101-1165, E-ISSN 2002-4010, Vol. 32, p. 104-136Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

The Mainland Scandinavian languages have variants of two indefinite singular articles, en (‘a/an’) and någon (‘any’). In these languages, the article någon also has a plural form, några, but Swedish differs from Danish and Norwegian in that en also has a plural form: ena. Thus, Swedish has a system of two indefinite plural articles. However, the use of ena is restricted and not thoroughly clarified. This study investigates the use of ena as an indefinite plural article in modern Swedish by comparing it to the use of några. Approximately 500 occurrences of noun phrases with ena and några were excerpted from text corpora and analysed with respect to lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic aspects. The analyses are combined with acceptability judgements of ena in different contexts. The results show that ena is less frequent than några in the corpora, and that its use is affected by the lexical context, the information structure, as well as the clause type. Firstly, noun phrases with ena are exclusively evaluative, and the article itself seems to give rise to an evaluative reading. Secondly, ena is principally used in noun phrases describing a referent and accordingly appears with information-structural focus. Finally, ena does not appear in negative polarity contexts, i.e. questions, negative statements and conditionals. Therefore, the analysis suggests that the plural indefinite article ena should be treated as a positive polarity item.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Uppsala: Adolf Noreen-sällskapet för svensk språk- och stilforskning , 2022. Vol. 32, p. 104-136
Keywords [en]
indefinite article, emotive article, plural, predicative, Swedish
National Category
Specific Languages
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-50028DOI: 10.33063/diva-492995Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85153589286OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hh-50028DiVA, id: diva2:1739525
Note

Title in English: "The Swedish indefinite, plural article ena. Lexicon, syntax, and pragmatics."

Available from: 2023-02-26 Created: 2023-02-26 Last updated: 2025-10-01Bibliographically approved

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Collberg, Philippe

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CiteExportLink to record
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Citation style
  • apa
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  • nn-NO
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  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
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