Verdifullt om verbkongruens

In his excellent thesis from 2022, Adam Horn af Åminne discusses the reduction and loss of agreement for person and number in North Germanic in general, and in South-West Swedish dialects in particular. In this paper, I adhere to the tradition of doctoral thesis defences in Scandinavia, which is both to summarise the work and to question some of the conclusions. The thesis presentsa valuable survey of the process of gradual reduction and ultimate loss. It incorporates insights from typological linguistics and it tracks the final stages in South-West Swedish dialects of the 19th and 20th centuries in detail. The fact that this kind of agreement remained for so long has received too little attention up until now, so the thesis is a welcome contribution. The reduction process is also studied in particular individuals; the author uses the old dialectological data in a new way. He shows differences between dialect areas, and that the newer patterns tend to turn up first in areas that are more ‘central’. Where we have traditionally seen a dialect levelling in Sweden, the author sees a language shift. Arguments are presented for seeing the process as simplification. On this point, however, I am somewhat sceptical. While the final outcome may look like simplification, many intermediate stages do not, making it difficult to believe that simplification is the motivation for the process.