Norwegian Possessive Pronouns: Phrases, Words or Suffixes?

In Norwegian, possessive pronouns can be prenominal (min bil 'my car') or postnominal (bilen min 'car.DEF my'). In the Principles and Parameters literature, the standard assumption is that possessive pronouns are prenominal in underlying structure, while the postnominal position is a result of N-movement. This paper takes a different approach. The focus is the grammatical differences between the positions. They motivate an analysis in which prenominal and postnominal possessive pronouns do not realize one underlying position. Lexical Functional Grammar makes it possible to implement this kind of analysis in a simple way. The basic properties of prenominal and postnominal possessive pronouns follow from the theory of strong and weak pronouns. There is evidence, however, that the dialect of Western Oslo has a group of suffixal possessives.