I dette åbenbaringens lys — an example of word formation, incongruency, or maybe something completely different?

Abstract

The article concerns constructions such as et herrens år in Danish where the first of the nouns is in the definite form (with a suffixed definite article), in the genitive case and functions as an attribute and not a determiner in relation to the following noun. The determiner (a definite or indefinite article, demonstrative pronoun, etc.), on the other hand, is not linked directly to the following noun but to the one that occurs in the last position of the whole phrase. This stands in contrast to the regular structure of the noun phrase where the determiner refers to the directly following noun (e.g., en bils ejer). In the case of the construction discussed here, however, the determiner refers to the last noun in the phrase (e.g., dette herrens år). Moreover, adjectives can occur before both nouns, but they will always refer to the last noun (e.g., en vældig kræfternes udfoldelse). The work discusses both the grammatical and semantical aspects of the construction. As demonstrated in the article, the construction should not be treated from the perspective of word formation, as it is rather an example of an attributive use of a definite noun in the genitive. Secondly, it is also interesting to point out that the semantic relations within the construction do not fully overlap with the grammatical relations, as from the semantic point of view the determiner, the adjectives, as well as the attributive noun, refer to the main noun. Thirdly, and most importantly, there are strong indications that here we are not dealing with just a few rare examples of a more literary style or certain fixed expressions, but with a regular grammatical construction. To conclude with certainty, however, it is necessary to complement this exploratory research with a corpus study, and preferably also a survey that could reveal the native speakers’ perception of the construction.