Sin og sig med flertalsantecedent fra runesten til LANCHART

Resumé

In modern Danish, the reflexive pronouns sin and sig differ in terms of their ability to corefer with a plural antecedent. The reflexive possessive sin typically only allows singular antecedents and the reflexive pronoun sig allows both singular and plural antecedents. Instead of sin, speakers use the non-reflexive deres to corefer with a plural antecedent.

This difference between sin and sig is fairly new. Up until the beginning of the twentieth century, many speakers used not only sin but also sig primarily with singular antecedents and the non-reflexive counterparts deres and dem with plural antecedents. This usage pattern goes back to before the thirteenth century. In this paper I investigate the development in the use of sin and sig with plural antecedents. In the earliest runic sources of Danish from before 1000 AD, both sin and sig are

used with plural antecedents. In the Middle Danish provincial laws from the thirteenth century, sin and sig are both restricted to occurring mainly with singular antecedents. This usage, reflexive pronouns/possessives with singular antecedents and non-reflexive pronouns/possessives with plural antecedents, is found in the spoken language at least until the twentieth century. However, I show with data from the spoken corpus LANCHART that the use of dem with plural antecedents has almost disappeared in modern Danish.