‘identification’ and the Role of Morphology in the Scandinavian Noun Phrase*

Across the various varieties of Scandinavian a remarkable variation pertains to the syntactic structure of noun phrases. The aim of this paper is to argue that the variation to a large extent, and in a principled way, is due to overt morphological variation. As a starting point consider the possessive noun phrases in (1) and (2) from the Skellefteå dialect in northern Sweden. In Mainland Scandinavian dialects there are generally no gender distinctions in the plural, and unless explicitly stated, ‘m.’ ‘f.’, and ‘n’ should henceforth be taken to denote masculine, feminine, and neuter singular, respectively.