Abstract
Like its English cognate that, the Danish complementizer at is optional in most contexts. Several factors have been hypothesized to govern the variation between presence and absence of at. This paper tests the hypothesis that speakers use optional at as a filler in case of production difficulties. The hypothesis entails two specific predictions: 1) at is relatively more frequent in complement clauses with disfluency symptoms such as pauses and lengthenings (assumption: disfluency is symptomatic of production difficulties); 2) at is relatively more frequent in complement clauses which have a non-pronominal subject (assumption: pronouns, being easily accessible, are easier to produce than e.g. nouns and complex noun phrases). Prediction 1 is tested on spoken language data (from the LANCHART corpus). Prediction 2 is tested on both spoken language data and written language data (from Kor-pusDK). Both predictions are confirmed. Interestingly, prediction 2 is confirmed not only in the spoken language test, but also in the written language test. Thus, an instance of grammatical variation which is best understood as governed by phenomena characteristic for spoken language (production difficulties), is found also in the written language.
| Original language | Danish |
|---|---|
| Journal | NyS. Nydanske Studier og Almen Kommunikationsteori |
| Volume | 42 |
| Pages (from-to) | 41-61 |
| Number of pages | 21 |
| ISSN | 0106-8040 |
| Publication status | Published - 2012 |