Publications | Sune Gregersen

Here you can download my journal articles, book chapters, theses, unpublished papers, and book reviews. Click the ABS button for an abstract of the publication and the PDF button to download it.

Edited volume

2026

A layered approach to habitual constructions

2026

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Habitual constructions, such as those based on English used to and Spanish soler, are linguistic expressions denoting situations that typically occur. This volume proposes a novel approach to such expressions, arguing that habituality is not a unified semantic category, but rather a family of related meanings which differ in their scopal position within the clause. The volume contains a detailed account of habitual meaning from the perspective of Functional Discourse Grammar as well as in-depth empirical studies of habitual constructions in ten languages: Coptic, Plains Cree, Dolgan, Ancient Greek, Kwaza, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, and Spanish. It will be of interest not just to specialists of these languages, but to anyone working on habituality and other aspectual categories in the languages of the world.
@book{gregersen&hengeveld2026, title = {A layered approach to habitual constructions}, editor = {Gregersen, Sune and Hengeveld, Kees}, series = {Typological Studies in Language}, number = {136}, year = {2026}, doi = {10.1075/tsl.136}, publisher = {John Benjamins}, address = {Amsterdam} }

Journal articles

2025

Hit-konstruktionen i moderne dansk [The ‘gimme’ construction in Modern Danish]

Marie Herget Christensen, and Sune Gregersen

Danske Talesprog, 2025

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In this contribution we discuss the Danish hit ‘gimme’ construction, as in hit med pengene! ‘gimme the money!’. The particle hit is traditionally classified as an adverb, but is limited to the hit construction in Modern Danish. We investigate the structure and semantics of the construction and discuss how it differs from “elliptical” directional expressions like så afsted med os ‘off we go’. We show that the construction always has directive (regulative) illocutionary force and has a number of similarities with imperative constructions. For this reason, we argue that hit ‘gimme’ is best classified as a dedicated directive particle. Finally, we briefly discuss the value of less traditional corpora in investigations of modern spoken language.
@article{christensen&gregersen2025hit, title = {Hit-konstruktionen i moderne dansk [The ‘gimme’ construction in Modern Danish]}, author = {Christensen, Marie Herget and Gregersen, Sune}, journal = {Danske Talesprog}, volume = {25}, pages = {1--16}, year = {2025} }

2024

Gide være(t) over og dansk-nedertysk-frisisk sprogkontakt [Gide være(t) over ‘feel like’ and Danish–Low German–Frisian language contact]

Sune Gregersen

Danske Talesprog, 2024

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The article discusses an overlooked phraseological parallel between Danish, Low German, and Frisian dialects, namely the expression gide være(t) over ‘feel like’ (Low German öwer (wesen/sien) mögen, Insular North Frisian auer wees mei). I argue that the expression is a structural loan from Low German into Danish and North Frisian and that such idiomatic expressions have a great potential for the study of historical language contact.
@article{gregersen2024kontakt, title = {Gide være(t) over og dansk-nedertysk-frisisk sprogkontakt [Gide være(t) over ‘feel like’ and Danish–Low German–Frisian language contact]}, author = {Gregersen, Sune}, journal = {Danske Talesprog}, volume = {24}, pages = {1--14}, year = {2024} }

Complement-dependent semantics in Wangerooge Frisian quídder ‘say, tell; ask’

Sune Gregersen

Linguistics in Amsterdam, 2024

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@article{gregersen2024quidder,
  title = {Complement-dependent semantics in Wangerooge Frisian quídder ‘say, tell; ask’},
  author = {Gregersen, Sune},
  journal = {Linguistics in Amsterdam},
  volume = {15},
  number = {2},
  pages = {153--158},
  year = {2024},
}

Split definiteness and historical language documentation: Observations from Wangerooge Frisian

Sune Gregersen

Linguistics in Amsterdam, 2024

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This paper investigates the use of definite articles in Wangerooge Frisian (Germanic, northern Germany) and discusses a number of methodological problems in the analysis of definiteness in an extinct linguistic variety. I show that Wangerooge Frisian exhibited a ‘split’ definiteness system with two formally and functionally distinct definite articles: the ‘weak’ article de/’t and the ‘strong’ article dan/djuu/dait/daa. Similar systems have been described for other languages of the world, including other Germanic varieties. However, the analysis of the Wangerooge Frisian system is complicated by a number of factors relating to the nature of the linguistic documentation, most of which was collected from an elderly speaker in the mid-19th century. The paper discusses five such issues, such as the lack of metadata about the elicitation situation and the inconsistent stress marking in much of the documentation. I then present a brief sketch of the definiteness system which takes these limitations into account.
@article{gregersen2024def, title = {Split definiteness and historical language documentation: {Observations} from {Wangerooge} {Frisian}}, subtitle = {}, author = {Gregersen, Sune}, journal = {Linguistics in Amsterdam}, volume = {15}, number = {1}, pages = {71--96}, year = {2024}, }
An evidential perfect in Wangerooge Frisian

Sune Gregersen

Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, 2024

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This paper analyses the use of verbal tense forms in Wangerooge Frisian, a West Germanic language spoken on the Wadden Sea island Wangerooge until the early twentieth century. Specifically, the use of the present, past, and perfect constructions is investigated in a corpus of texts from the nineteenth century. It is argued that the Wangerooge Frisian perfect could be used as a non-firsthand evidential strategy marking the propositional content as hearsay or inferred. While such evidential perfects are cross-linguistically well attested, they are generally thought to be uncommon in Western European languages. The Wangerooge Frisian case thus shows the value of lesser-studied vernaculars for the typology of European languages.
@article{gregersen2024evid, title = {An evidential perfect in Wangerooge Frisian}, author = {Gregersen, Sune}, journal = {Acta Linguistica Hafniensia}, volume = {56}, pages = {1--30}, doi = {10.1080/03740463.2024.2359804}, year = {2024}, }
An overlooked source of Wangerooge Frisian: The birthday invitation of Louwine Luths

Sune Gregersen

Us Wurk, 2024

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The paper presents and discusses a hitherto overlooked text in Wangerooge Frisian, a short birthday invitation written in 1934 by the native speaker Louwine Luths. The text was first published in the members’ bulletin of a local genealogical society, which is currently only available in print in a few German archives. In the paper I re-publish the birthday invitation – along with another short fragment of Wangerooge Frisian from the bulletin – and discuss a number of salient linguistic features. The two short texts are of particular interest because they were written down by native speakers of Wangerooge Frisian.
@article{gregersen2024usw, title = {An overlooked source of Wangerooge Frisian: The birthday invitation of Louwine Luths}, author = {Gregersen, Sune}, journal = {Us Wurk}, volume = {73}, pages = {49--64}, doi = {10.21827/uw.73.49-64}, year = {2024}, }

2023

Komplementsætninger med V2-ledstilling i wangeroogefrisisk [Complement clauses with V2 word order in Wangerooge Frisian]

Sune Gregersen

Ny forskning i grammatik, 2023

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The topic of this paper is word order in complement clauses in Wangerooge Frisian, a now extinct language of Northern Germany. Like many other Germanic languages, Wangerooge Frisian had an alternation between verb-second (V2) and verb-late word order in subordinate clauses. The paper investigates the use of V2 and verb-late in complement clauses with dat ‘that’ in the Ehrentraut corpus from the middle of the 19th century. Inspired by the analysis of Danish in Hansen & Heltoft (2011), it is suggested that V2 in Wangerooge Frisian was limited to complement clauses with “constative potential”, while verb-late could occur in all complement clauses.
@article{gregersen2023v2, title = {Komplementsætninger med V2-ledstilling i wangeroogefrisisk [Complement clauses with V2 word order in Wangerooge Frisian]}, author = {Gregersen, Sune}, journal = {Ny forskning i grammatik}, volume = {30}, pages = {40--56}, doi = {10.7146/nfg.v1i30.137952}, year = {2023}, }
Restrictions on past-tense passives in Late Modern Danish

Sune Gregersen

Open Linguistics, 2023

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This article investigates a case of lexical restrictions on a voice construction, specifically Danish past-tense passives. Present-Day Danish has both a periphrastic and an inflectional passive construction, but in the past tense, most ablaut (strong) verbs cannot form the inflectional passive (e.g. *skreves ‘was written’, *bares ‘was carried’). Various explanations for these restrictions have been proposed in the literature, but their historical background has not been investigated in any detail. This article focusses on the passive restrictions in Late Modern Danish, using various sources mainly from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is shown that while lexical restrictions on the past-tense s-passive are already mentioned in eighteenth and nineteenthcentury grammars, the grammaticality of the individual forms has changed; for instance, the now obsolete form skreves ‘was written’ is attested in several Late Modern Danish sources. Furthermore, the primary sources differ greatly with respect to their use of the passive in the past tense. I suggest that sociolinguistic variables, such as level of education and formality of the texts, must be taken into account when trying to explain the development of the Danish passive, and that the lexical restrictions on past-tense s-passives may in fact be a side effect of standardization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
@article{gregersen2023passive, title = {Restrictions on past-tense passives in Late Modern Danish}, author = {Gregersen, Sune}, journal = {Open Linguistics}, volume = {9}, year = {2023}, doi = {10.1515/opli-2022-0196} }
Regularized modal verbs in Middle English dialects

Sune Gregersen

English Language and Linguistics, 2023

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The article investigates an overlooked development in the history of the English modals, namely the regularization of their plural inflection in Middle English (e.g. PRS.IND.PL shulleþ for expected shullen). Using the LAEME and eLALME atlases and a number of electronic corpora, I document the frequency and dialectal distribution of such regularized modal verbs. It is shown that regularized SHALL was fairly common in Late Middle English, regularized CAN less so, and regularized MAY only very sporadically attested. The distribution of these forms shows a clear areal pattern, being most numerous in manuscripts from the southwest Midlands. I suggest that the most likely explanation for the observed patterns is interparadigmatic analogy with the ‘anomalous’ verb WILL, which in some dialects had developed the same stem vowel as plural SHALL.
@article{gregersen2023regmod, title = {Regularized modal verbs in Middle English dialects}, author = {Gregersen, Sune}, journal = {English Language and Linguistics}, volume = {27}, number = {1}, pages = {23--43}, year = {2023}, doi = {10.1017/S1360674322000053} }

2021

Proksimativt færdig ’lige ved’ i ømål og bornholmsk [Proximative færdig ‘about to’ in Insular and Bornholm Danish]

Sune Gregersen

Danske Talesprog, 2021

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The article investigates the use of færdig (‘done, ready’) in the sense ‘about to’ in traditional Insular and Bornholm Danish, as in ieg var færdi at qvæles ‘I was about to choke’ (Ole Kollerød). I describe this as a so-called proximative aspectual construction and investigate its syntactic and semantic properties in a small text corpus. It is shown that proximative færdig was different in the Insular and Bornholm dialects with respect to semantics, morphology, and choice of preposition. I also briefly discuss the distribution of the construction in older written Danish (until the 19th century) and in other Scandinavian varieties.
@article{gregersen2021proksimativ, title = {Proksimativt færdig 'lige ved' i ømål og bornholmsk [Proximative færdig `about to' in Insular and Bornholm Danish]}, author = {Gregersen, Sune}, journal = {Danske Talesprog}, volume = {21}, pages = {131--152}, year = {2021} }
Habituals in contrast: Danish pleje and its Dutch and German translations

Sune Gregersen, Nils Karsten, and Marieke Olthof

Linguistics in Amsterdam, 2021

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This paper investigates the expression of habitual meaning in the three Germanic languages Danish, Dutch, and German. We first survey habitual expressions in Danish, arguing that the primary means for expressing habitual meaning is the catenative verb pleje ‘usually do, used to’. Using a parallel corpus of Danish literary texts from two time periods (1843–1901 and 1973–1987) and their translations into Dutch and German, we then investigate how pleje is translated into these two languages. Although closely related verbs are available in Dutch (plegen) and German (pflegen), our findings suggest that there is no single way of conveying habituality in these two languages. Instead, habituality can be expressed by a number of different strategies which are subject to diachronic and stylistic variation. In addition, the material shows that Danish pleje may have a contrastive function along with its habitual meaning, expressing an explicit contrast between the usual and the current state of affairs.
@article{gregersen&al2021habituals, title = {Habituals in contrast: Danish pleje and its Dutch and German translations}, author = {Gregersen, Sune and Karsten, Nils and Olthof, Marieke}, journal = {Linguistics in Amsterdam}, volume = {14}, numer = {1}, pages = {39--64}, year = {2021}, }

2020

Language death, modality, and functional explanations

Sune Gregersen

Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, 2020

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The article is an in-depth review of Petar Kehayov’s monograph The Fate of Mood and Modality in Language Death: Evidence from Minor Finnic (De Gruyter Mouton, 2017). The book investigates the development of mood and modality in four moribund Finnic languages spoken in the Russian Federation: Votic, Ingrian, Central Lude, and Eastern Seto. After a detailed summary of the book, I discuss a number of issues relating to (a) the semantic map used to analyze the modal meanings; (b) the difference between language death-related changes and “regular” language change; and (c) the explanation of the observed patterns in terms of conceptual complexity. On the last point, I suggest that usage frequency may provide a better explanation for some of the observed changes.
@article{gregersen2020lgdeath, title = {Language death, modality, and functional explanations}, author = {Gregersen, Sune}, journal = {Acta Linguistica Hafniensia}, volume = {52}, number = {1}, pages = {117--143}, year = {2020}, doi = {10.1080/03740463.2020.1743582} }

2019

Gloses d’auteur. L’exemplaire du Cours annoté par Louis Hjelmslev

Lorenzo Cigana, Estanislao Sofia, Sune Gregersen, and 2 more authors

Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure, 2019

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A copy of the Cours de linguistique générale has been found in 2016 in Amsterdam. Internal evidences lead us to believe it was the copy belonging to Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev. The aim of this paper is to discuss this attribution, by resuming Hjelmslev’s biography and academic career (§2) in order to show the plausibility of such hypothesis (§3). We then present (§4) a transcription of the textual occurrences (signs and glosses) found therein, the most relevant of which will be briefly analysed on a conceptual point of view in our final commentary (§5).
@article{cigana&al2019gloses, title = {Gloses d'auteur. L'exemplaire du Cours annoté par Louis Hjelmslev}, author = {Cigana, Lorenzo and Sofia, Estanislao and Gregersen, Sune and Martín Gallego, Carolina and Béjar Pérez, Víctor}, journal = {Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure}, volume = {72}, pages = {9--56}, year = {2019}, doi = {10.47421/CFS72_9-56} }
Årsagssætninger med fordi i (formelt) dansk talesprog [Causal clauses with fordi ‘because’ in (formal) spoken Danish]

Sune Gregersen

NyS: Nydanske Sprogstudier, 2019

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This article investigates the form and function of fordi ‘because’ clauses in formal spoken Danish. The corpus consists of the minutes and video recordings of five debates in the Danish Parliament. It is shown that verb-second (V2) order is much more frequent than verb-third (V3) – indicating that V2 is not only a feature of colloquial spoken language – and that fordi can introduce interrogative clauses (as in fordi hvad handler det om i skrøbelige stater? ‘because what is it all about in vulnerable states?’). In addition, it is discussed to what extent the choice between V2 and V3 is predicted by the meaning of the fordi ‘because’ clause.
@article{gregersen2019fordi, title = {\AA{}rsagssætninger med fordi i (formelt) dansk talesprog [Causal clauses with fordi ‘because’ in (formal) spoken Danish]}, author = {Gregersen, Sune}, journal = {NyS: Nydanske Sprogstudier}, volume = {57}, pages = {80--111}, year = {2019}, doi = {10.7146/nys.v1i57.117119} }
From ‘may’ to ‘must’ in late medieval Danish

Sune Gregersen

Linguistics in Amsterdam, 2019

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The paper investigates the meanings of the modal verb MA/MÅ in late Middle Danish, specifically the language at the time of the Reformation in the early 16th century. The goal is to identify the patterns of polysemy between different modal meanings (dynamic, permission, optative, etc.) and to identify the contexts where the change from dynamic possibility (‘can, may’) to dynamic necessity (‘must, have to’) happened. It is argued that this change occurred in contexts where open possibility was reinterpreted as inevitability, possibly through an intermediate stage of ‘prediction’. The development of MA/MÅ is compared to the history of English must and its West Germanic cognates.
@article{gregersen2019maatte, title = {From ‘may’ to ‘must’ in late medieval Danish}, author = {Gregersen, Sune}, journal = {Linguistics in Amsterdam}, volume = {12}, numer = {1}, pages = {1--28}, year = {2019}, }
Wat mutt, dat mutt: ‘Independent’ modals in West Germanic vernaculars

Wim Caers, and Sune Gregersen

Nederlandse Taalkunde, 2019

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The squib investigates the dialectal distribution of the Dutch construction type HET kan/mag/moet, lit. ‘it can/may/must’, where a modal verb occurs ‘independently’ with an eventive subject and no infinitival complement. The construction is shown to be widely attested not only in traditional dialects of Dutch, but also in Frisian, Low German, and Afrikaans. We suggest that the construction, which does not occur in standard German or English, is an areal feature shared by the West Germanic vernaculars of northwestern Germany and the Low Countries, including the South African ‘side branch’ Afrikaans.
@article{caers&gregersen2019modals, title = {Wat mutt, dat mutt: ‘Independent’ modals in West Germanic vernaculars}, author = {Caers, Wim and Gregersen, Sune}, journal = {Nederlandse Taalkunde}, volume = {24}, numer = {3}, pages = {399--417}, year = {2019}, doi = {10.5117/NEDTAA2019.3.005.CAER} }

2018

Some (critical) questions for diachronic construction grammar

Sune Gregersen

Folia Linguistica Historica, 2018

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The paper critically reviews a recent volume on Diachronic Construction Grammar. It is argued that a more convincing case for the diachronic construction grammar approach could have been made by more explicitly comparing it to other approaches to historical linguistics, and that a number of central notions, such as “constructionalization”, are not applied consistently throughout the volume. In addition, an analysis of the constructionalization of English BE going to presented in the volume is examined and shown not to be supported by the Early Modern English data.
@article{gregersen2018dcxg, title = {Some (critical) questions for diachronic construction grammar}, author = {Gregersen, Sune}, journal = {Folia Linguistica Historica}, volume = {39}, number = {2}, pages = {341--360}, year = {2018}, doi = {10.1515/flih-2018-0012} }

2017

”Hver gang jeg skriver en roman” – metafiktive former og indstillinger i Inger Christensens Azorno [Metafictional forms and attitudes in Inger Christensen’s Azorno]

Sune Gregersen

Folia Scandinavica Posnaniensia, 2017

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The paper presents an analysis and discussion of the Danish writer Inger Christensen’s experimental novel Azorno from 1967. It is argued that the novel, which is partly in epistolary form, can be read as a literary objet trouvé, a found manuscript consisting of a struggling writer’s unfinished notes and documents. I then attempt to characterise the novel using the typology of metafictional forms and attitudes proposed by Gemzøe (2001), and point out a number of potential problems with this typology.
@article{gregersen2017azorno, title = {”Hver gang jeg skriver en roman” -- metafiktive former og indstillinger i Inger Christensens Azorno [Metafictional forms and attitudes in Inger Christensen's Azorno]}, author = {Gregersen, Sune}, journal = {Folia Scandinavica Posnaniensia}, volume = {23}, pages = {60--74}, year = {2017}, doi = {10.1515/fsp-2017-0007} }

‘To dare larks’ in Early Modern English

Sune Gregersen

Notes and Queries, 2017

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@article{gregersen2017larks,
  title = {‘To dare larks’ in Early Modern English},
  author = {Gregersen, Sune},
  journal = {Notes and Queries},
  volume = {64},
  number = {4},
  pages = {537--540},
  year = {2017},
}

The status of Old English dare revisited

Sune Gregersen

Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, 2017

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The development of dare in the history of English has played an important role in the literature on grammatical change and (de)grammaticalization. This paper aims to clarify two issues regarding the syntax and semantics of dare in earlier English: when it is first attested with to-infinitives, and to what extent it can be said to have been semantically ‘bleached’ in a number of Old English attestations. The conclusions are, firstly, that dare is not attested with to-infinitives in Old English (pace Tomaszewska 2014), and that a number of Middle English attestations that have been suggested in the literature are not convincing (pace Visser 1963–73; Beths 1999; Molencki 2005). Secondly, it is argued that the co-occurrence of dare and verbs like gedyrstlæcan ‘venture, be bold, presume’ in Old English is not an indication of semantic ‘bleaching’ of dare, and that the verb was not more ‘auxiliarized’ in Old English than it is today.
@article{gregersen2017oedare, title = {The status of Old English dare revisited}, author = {Gregersen, Sune}, journal = {Studia Anglica Posnaniensia}, volume = {52}, number = {3}, pages = {325--343}, year = {2017}, doi = {10.1515/stap-2017-0012} }

2014

Delt infinitiv i dansk [The split infinitive in Danish]

Sune Gregersen

Danske Studier, 2014

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In the standard register of the Danish language, negations and adverbs that are part of the infinitive phrase are placed before the infinitive particle, as in German and Dutch, whereas in standard Swedish, such elements are placed between the infinitive particle and the infinitive form of the verb: hence Danish ikke at være ‘not to be’ vs. Swedish att inte vara, ‘to not be’. However, in modern Danish a ‘split infinitive’ in which an adverb or a negation is placed between at and the infinitive is sometimes encountered in written as well as spoken genres, and this phenomenon is also attested in earlier stages of the written language and in many of the so-called traditional dialects. In this article, the distribution of the Danish split infinitive is investigated, and the possible consequences for the analysis of infinitive clauses in Danish are discussed. It is argued that the field analysis of the syntax of Danish should allow for a degree of flexibility with regard to the position of the infinitive particle.
@article{gregersen2014infinitiv, title = {Delt infinitiv i dansk [The split infinitive in Danish]}, author = {Gregersen, Sune}, journal = {Danske Studier}, volume = {2014}, pages = {76--87}, year = {2014}, doi = {10.5281/zenodo.7773961}, }

Book chapters

2026

A layered approach to habitual constructions: Introduction

Sune Gregersen, and Kees Hengeveld

In A layered approach to habitual constructions, 2026

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In this book, habitual meaning is studied from a typological perspective, with Chapters 2–11 describing habitual meaning in ten different languages, and Chapter 12 presenting typological generalizations. In this introductory chapter we define the notion of habitual meaning, introduce the theoretical framework used, explain the methodology that was applied, and present our typological predictions. As an appendix we provide the typological questionnaire which the language-specific chapters are based on.
@incollection{gregersen&hengeveld2026intr, title = {A layered approach to habitual constructions: Introduction}, author = {Gregersen, Sune and Hengeveld, Kees}, booktitle = {A layered approach to habitual constructions}, editor = {Gregersen, Sune and Hengeveld, Kees}, series = {Typological Studies in Language}, number = {136}, doi = {10.1075/tsl.136.01gre}, pages = {1--41}, year = {2026}, publisher = {John Benjamins}, address = {Amsterdam} }
A layered approach to habitual constructions: Typological generalizations

Hongmei Fang, Egbert Fortuin, Rene Genis, and 13 more authors

In A layered approach to habitual constructions, 2026

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This chapter presents typological generalizations that can be derived from a comparison of the data presented in Chapters 2–11 in this volume. The languages are compared in the light of the two predictions presented in Chapter 1: (i) across and within languages, dedicated habitual expressions may differ from one another in terms of the layer(s) at which they apply; (ii) if a habitual expression applies at more than one layer, the layers involved will be contiguous in the hierarchy of layers established within Functional Discourse Grammar. Both predictions are confirmed without exceptions, and thus support the new approach to habitual meanings elaborated in this volume.
@incollection{fang&al2026concl, title = {A layered approach to habitual constructions: Typological generalizations}, author = {Fang, Hongmei and Fortuin, Egbert and Genis, Rene and Giomi, Riccardo and Gregersen, Sune and Hengeveld, Kees and Kemp, Lois and Kyselica, Paula and la Roi, Ezra and Olbertz, Hella and Stapert, Eugenie and van der Vliet, Jacques and van der Voort, Hein and de Wit, Sjaak and Wolvengrey, Arok and Zakrzewska, Ewa}, booktitle = {A layered approach to habitual constructions}, editor = {Gregersen, Sune and Hengeveld, Kees}, series = {Typological Studies in Language}, number = {136}, doi = {10.1075/tsl.136.12fan}, pages = {372--385}, year = {2026}, publisher = {John Benjamins}, address = {Amsterdam} }

2024

Et mærkeligt modalverbum: om gide fra middelalderen til moderne dansk [A mysterious modal verb: on gide ‘feel like’ from the Middle Ages to Modern Danish]

Sune Gregersen

In Mange grublende Dage ere gaaede forud: Grammatik i 1800-tallet som nøgle til moderne normproblemer, 2024

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This paper traces the history of the Danish “marginal” modal gide ‘feel like’ from the Middle Ages to the present day. While gide has developed syntactically in the direction of the modal verbs, its semantic development has rather been away from prototypical modality: in Middle Danish gide expressed possibility (‘be able to’), whereas in Present-Day Danish it expresses an inclination of the subject referent (‘feel like, bother to’). I suggest that this semantic shift happened in contexts where a possibility was contingent on the current disposition of the subject referent, such as their stamina or appetite. I also argue (pace van der Auwera et al. 2009) that Middle Danish gide was not limited to so-called participant-internal possibility contexts.
@incollection{gregersen2024gide, title = {Et mærkeligt modalverbum: om gide fra middelalderen til moderne dansk [A mysterious modal verb: on gide ‘feel like’ from the Middle Ages to Modern Danish]}, author = {Gregersen, Sune}, booktitle = {Mange grublende Dage ere gaaede forud: Grammatik i 1800-tallet som nøgle til moderne normproblemer}, editor = {Jensen, Eva Skafte and Schack, Jørgen}, series = {Dansk Sprognævns skrifter}, number = {54}, pages = {101--120}, year = {2024}, publisher = {Dansk Sprognævn}, address = {Bogense} }

2022

The meanings of Middle Danish mughe ‘can, may, must’

Sune Gregersen

In Three crowns and eleven tears: East Norse philology from Cologne, 2022

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This paper investigates the meaning of the modal verb mughe in four Late Middle Danish texts from the early 16th century. It is argued that the necessity meaning of mughe, which is still found in Modern Danish måtte, developed in ambiguous contexts where both possibility and necessity were possible readings. In addition, it is suggested that Late Middle Danish mughe is also attested with the meaning “prediction”, which may have played a role in the development of the necessity meaning.
@incollection{gregersen2022sof, title = {The meanings of Middle Danish mughe ‘can, may, must’}, author = {Gregersen, Sune}, booktitle = {Three crowns and eleven tears: East Norse philology from Cologne}, editor = {Blode, Anja Ute and Brandenburg, Elena}, series = {Selskab for Østnordisk Filologi}, number = {4}, pages = {109--125}, year = {2022}, publisher = {Syddansk Universitetsforlag}, address = {Odense} }

2016

Middle English willen and the perfect infinitive

Sune Gregersen

In From variation to iconicity: Festschrift for Olga Fischer on the occasion of her 65th birthday, 2016

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@incollection{gregersen2016will,
  title = {Middle English willen and the perfect infinitive},
  author = {Gregersen, Sune},
  booktitle = {From variation to iconicity: Festschrift for Olga Fischer on the occasion of her 65th birthday},
  editor = {Bannink, Anne and Honselaar, Wim},
  pages = {129--139},
  year = {2016},
  publisher = {Pegasus},
  address = {Amsterdam}
}

Theses

2020

Early English modals: Form, function, and analogy

Sune Gregersen

2020

PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam

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This book concerns the early history of the English modals, in particular their morphosyntactic and semantic development in the Old English (c. AD 800–1100) and Middle English (c. AD 1100–1500) periods. The English modals have played an important role in both synchronic and diachronic linguistic work in the last decades, but a number of contested issues concerning their development remain unresolved. This dissertation attempts to answer some of the open questions through careful analysis of the extant Old and Middle English sources and comparison with other Germanic languages, such as Old Norse, Middle Danish, and Middle Dutch. The first part of the book provides a theoretical and methodological introduction to the study of the early English modals, the semantics of modality, and the historical corpora and other textual sources used for the investigation. The second part presents the investigation itself, which consists of four interconnected studies on the development of the modals, focussing on various morphological and syntactic developments in Middle English, the numerous changes to the ‘marginal’ modal DARE, and the semantic development of the ‘core’ modals CAN, MAY, and MUST. I pay particular attention to a number of changes which do not follow the predictions made in the grammaticalization literature, but which can be readily explained with reference to analogy.
@phdthesis{gregersen2020dissertation, title = {Early English modals: Form, function, and analogy}, author = {Gregersen, Sune}, series = {LOT Dissertation Series}, number = {579}, year = {2020}, institution = {University of Amsterdam}, address = {Amsterdam} }

2014

Fire former for kausalitet: En empirisk undersøgelse af fordi-sætninger i dansk talesprog [Four types of causality: An empirical study of fordi-clauses in spoken Danish]

Sune Gregersen

2014

MA thesis, University of Copenhagen

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This thesis is an empirical study of causal clauses headed by the conjunction fordi ‘because’ in spoken Danish. Such clauses may have either of two word order patterns, here termed verb-second (V2) and verb-third (V3), and they may serve a number of different semantic functions. The study examines the frequency of these word order patterns in fordi clauses in Danish and the possibility of a correspondence between the word order of the fordi clause and its semantic relation to the matrix clause. The data are five transcripts of debates in the national parliament of Denmark. After a brief introduction to the subject matter, I move on to discuss a number of theories about causal clauses, in particular the ones put forward by Sweetser (1990) and Hengeveld (1996), and conclude that it is possible to distinguish between four different semantic types: physical, intentional, epistemic, and illocutionary causal clauses. I then discuss four studies of Danish causal clauses, which differ as to what is regarded the deciding factor of the two word order patterns. In the following section, I describe my method and discuss some problems regarding the unambiguous identification of the semantic types in a pilot study consisting of one transcript from the parliament. I then go through my main study. The main findings of the study are: The V2 pattern is more frequent in fordi-clauses than the V3 pattern. Fordi clauses occur much more frequently with non-presupposed matrix clauses than with presupposed ones. There is no one-to-one correspondence between the word order of the fordi clause on the one hand and the semantic type of the fordi clause on the other; the same applies to whether the matrix clause contains presupposed information or not. The conjunction fordi can introduce interrogative clauses. I then argue that fordi is a highly polyfunctional conjunction as it may occur with either V2 or V3, with either presupposed and non-presupposed matrix clauses, with all four of the semantic types, and with a following interrogative clause. The last point I take as an indication that fordi is not always a subordinating conjunction, but can be a coordinator as well. Finally, I discuss the relation between causality and relevance and argue that this may serve as an explanation for some of the problems connected to the identification of the semantic type of the causal clauses.
@mathesis{gregersen2014speciale, title = {Fire former for kausalitet: En empirisk undersøgelse af fordi-sætninger i dansk talesprog [Four types of causality: An empirical study of fordi-clauses in spoken Danish]}, author = {Gregersen, Sune}, year = {2014}, doi = {10.5281/zenodo.8351636}, institution = {University of Copenhagen}, address = {Copenhagen} }

Unpublished papers

2025

Karrharde Frisian grammar sketch

Sune Gregersen, and Nora Schulz

2025

Unpublished working paper

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2023

A syntactic sketch of Wangerooge Frisian

Sune Gregersen

2023

Unpublished working paper

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2020

Habituals in four Bantu languages

Sune Gregersen

2020

Unpublished term paper

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The paper surveys the expression of habitual meaning and the origins of habitual markers in four Bantu languages: Eton (A.71), Swahili (G.42), Fwe (K.402), and Nyanja/Chewa (N.31). The division of labour between the habitual marker and other tense and aspect markers differs between the languages, but the coexpression of habitual and generic meaning is found in three of them. Swahili and Fwe both testify to a development COP + INF > HAB, but otherwise the habitual markers under scrutiny have different origins. The final section of the paper considers my findings in light of the cross-linguistic literature on habituals.

Book reviews

2025

Review of Joseph Campbell, The indigenous languages of the Americas (2024)

Sune Gregersen

LINGUIST List, 2025

Bib URL

@article{gregersen2025review-campbell,
  title = {Review of Joseph Campbell, The indigenous languages of the Americas (2024)},
  author = {Gregersen, Sune},
  journal = {LINGUIST List},
  volume = {36},
  number = {1037},
  year = {2025},
}

2022

Review of Tamara Bouso, Changes in Argument Structure: The Transitivizing Reaction Object Construction (2021)

Sune Gregersen

Research in Corpus Linguistics, 2022

Bib URL PDF

@article{gregersen2022review-bouso,
  title = {Review of Tamara Bouso, Changes in Argument Structure: The Transitivizing Reaction Object Construction (2021)},
  author = {Gregersen, Sune},
  journal = {Research in Corpus Linguistics},
  volume = {10},
  number = {1},
  pages = {192--204},
  year = {2022},
  doi = {10.32714/ricl.10.01.10}
}

2021

Review of Seppo Kittilä and Henrik Bergqvist, Evidentiality, egophoricity, and engagement (2020)

Sune Gregersen

LINGUIST List, 2021

Bib URL PDF

@article{gregersen2021review-kittila,
  title = {Review of Seppo Kittilä and Henrik Bergqvist, Evidentiality, egophoricity, and engagement (2020)},
  author = {Gregersen, Sune},
  journal = {LINGUIST List},
  volume = {32},
  number = {2053},
  year = {2021},
}

2020

Review of Ebba Hjorth et al., Dansk Sproghistorie 3: Bøjning og bygning (2019)

Sune Gregersen

RASK, 2020

Bib PDF

@article{gregersen2020review-ds3,
  title = {Review of Ebba Hjorth et al., Dansk Sproghistorie 3: Bøjning og bygning (2019)},
  author = {Gregersen, Sune},
  journal = {RASK},
  volume = {52},
  pages = {63--73},
  year = {2020}
}

Review of Elly van Gelderen, Analyzing syntax through texts (2018)

Sune Gregersen

Journal of Historical Syntax, 2020

Bib URL PDF

@article{gregersen2020review-evg,
  title = {Review of Elly van Gelderen, Analyzing syntax through texts (2018)},
  author = {Gregersen, Sune},
  journal = {Journal of Historical Syntax},
  volume = {4},
  number = {3},
  pages = {1--17},
  year = {2020},
  doi = {10.18148/hs/2020.v4i2.68},
}

2019

Review of Jóhanna Barðdal et al., Non-canonically case-marked subjects (2018)

Sune Gregersen

LINGUIST List, 2019

Bib URL PDF

@article{gregersen2019review-barddal,
  title = {Review of Jóhanna Barðdal et al., Non-canonically case-marked subjects (2018)},
  author = {Gregersen, Sune},
  journal = {LINGUIST List},
  volume = {30},
  number = {3270},
  year = {2019},
}

Review of Anna Wojtyś, The non-surviving preterite-present verbs in English (2017)

Sune Gregersen

Anglia, 2019

Bib URL PDF

@article{gregersen2019review-wojtys,
  title = {Review of Anna Wojtyś, The non-surviving preterite-present verbs in English (2017)},
  author = {Gregersen, Sune},
  journal = {Anglia},
  volume = {137},
  number = {1},
  pages = {163--167},
  year = {2019},
  doi = {10.1515/ang-2019-0012},
}

Review of Ebba Hjorth et al., Dansk Sproghistorie 1: Dansk tager form (2016)

Sune Gregersen

Journal of Germanic Linguistics, 2019

Bib URL PDF

@article{gregersen2019review-ds1,
  title = {Review of Ebba Hjorth et al., Dansk Sproghistorie 1: Dansk tager form (2016)},
  author = {Gregersen, Sune},
  journal = {Journal of Germanic Linguistics},
  volume = {31},
  number = {1},
  pages = {101--108},
  year = {2019},
  doi = {10.1017/S1470542718000065},
}