The function of supine auxiliaries in Swedish and Danish: morphology and syntax in argument assignment

Abstract Prima facie, the supine verb forms in Swedish and Danish appear almost identical in terms of morphological form and syntactic function, but a closer look reveals fundamental differences regarding their semantic coding and function. The paper examines the differences from the perspective of the auxiliary verbs with which the supine forms combine with special focus on the assignment of content (‘logical’) arguments to the verb in the supine form. The Swedish supine is inflected for voice, combines with only one true auxiliary and is used almost exclusively for retrospective tense constructions (perfect and pluperfect), and argument assignment is determined by the morphological specification of voice, while the auxiliary is redundant. The Danish supine has no voice inflection, combines with several auxiliaries and is used in a number of constructions, and argument assignment is determined primarily by auxiliary selection. The paper concludes that the Swedish auxiliary plays a peripheral role, which explains the possibility of auxiliary omission, while the Danish auxiliary set plays a crucial role in the specification of construction semantics and argument assignment, thus demonstrating a significant difference between the two languages in the interplay between morphology and syntax.