The syntax of Swedish present participles - the lexical category problem
Camilla Thurén · Lund University Publications (Lund University) · 2006
In this paper, we suggest that the properties of Swedish present participles can be accounted for if we take a syntactic approach to lexical categories in the lines of Distributed Morphology. We depart from the fact that Swedish words ending in -ande/-ende have the same denotation whether they appear attributively, predicatively, or nominally. Syntactically however, -ande/-ende-derivations appear in a multitude of functions. This suggests that the underlying syntactic structure of what appears to be the same form may differ. We argue in terms of Distributed Morphology for two Swedish present participles, one nominal ending on -ande/-ende and one true adjective ending in -ande/-ende, where -ande/-ende for the present participle cases denote imperfectivity and are licensed by an Asp head. For true adjectives, -ande/-ende are reanalysed as adjectival morphemes that denote property and are licenced by a categorial head a.