Subjects, nominative case, agreement and functional heads (original) (raw)
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Non-subject initial clauses and the left periphery in Icelandic: A distributional approach
Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax, 2023
This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of preverbal constituent placement in Icelandic V2 sentences, with a focus on the frequency and positioning of various non-subject elements in the preverbal slot. Our findings indicate that in Icelandic matrix V2 clauses, a DP is positioned preverbally in 68% of cases, with subject DPs accounting for 90% of these instances. Conversely, AdvPs and PPs are found in the preverbal slot in 19% and 10% of our analyzed examples, respectively. Notably, when temporal or locative adverbs are present, they are more likely than the subject to appear as the preverbal element, highlighting a significant tendency in topicalization patterns. Our results suggest that the preverbal position in Icelandic V2 clauses is not just an optimal site for the realization of frame-setting expressions, but rather the preferred one, especially for temporal and locative frames. This trend is predominantly observed in main clauses, in contrast to embedded clauses where fronting of such elements is considerably less prevalent.
Evading agreement: A new perspective on low nominative agreement in Icelandic
2016
This has been accounted for in terms of DEFECTIVE INTERVENTION: the φ-features of the dative argument cannot value the probing features of the verb, but nevertheless prevent it probing further. However, this is not enough to explain the ungrammaticality of (1)—“default” 3rd person agreement on the verb should still be available, just as it is in contexts such as (2), when the low nominative is not an argument of the agreeing verb, but originates in a small clause (Sigurðsson 2000, Schütze 2003). Hence it has been proposed that 1st/2nd person pronouns require licensing by entering into an agreement relation specifically with a Person probe, as motivated for the PCC in other languages (see discussion in Preminger 2011). However, this still does not account for the availability of (2), as the 2sg low nominative does not agree with the main verb. Therefore (2) should be as bad as (1), but it is not.
The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics, 2010
In this article we investigate the status of two different types of movement in subordinate clauses in Faroese: the movement of the finite verb to a position below the subject but above negation and medial adverbs (V-to-I), and the movement of some XP and the finite verb to positions above the subject (V2). The exact status of these phenomena in contemporary Faroese, a language that has been argued to be undergoing syntactic change, is a matter of dispute; we attempt to clarify this using the methodology of Magnitude Estimation (ME). We extend what is known by presenting the results of a systematic comparison of judgment data from Icelandic (where the finite verb obligatorily moves to a high position within the clause, and embedded V2 has been claimed to be possible quite generally), Danish (where the finite verb obligatorily remains in a low position, and embedded V2 has been claimed to be restricted), and Faroese (where the status of verb movement is precisely at issue, and the availability of embedded V2 has been little explored).
Journal of Linguistics, 2019
This paper addresses the meaning and use of cleftedwh-interrogatives (I-clefts) in Swedish. It is shown that I-clefts always relate immediately to the topic under discussion and serve to clarify a matter in relation to this topic. They are never used in out-of-the-blue contexts. I argue that I-clefts have the same information structure as typically assumed for declarative clefts: the clefted clause expresses an existential presupposition and the cleft phrase is the identificational focus of the utterance. I further argue that the implication of existence commonly associated withcanonicalargument questions is weaker (a conversational implicature) than the existential presupposition associated with clefts. The results from an extensive corpus survey show that argument I-clefts (who,what) constitute no less than 98% of the total number of I-clefts in my material. This frequency is linked to the presuppositional status of the cleft construction: in contexts where the denoted event is pr...
Proceedings of the Western Conference on Linguistics, Vol.21, WECOL 2011
2012
According to, (2), the morphological richness of Icelandic forces the verb to raise to Infl. Conversely, because Swedish has no agreement distinctions, there is no incitement for the verb to move out the VP. Hence the contrast between (5a) and (5b): (5) a. Icelandic að hann keypti ekki [ VP t V bókina]. that he bought not the.book '... that he didn't buy the book.'(Platzack, 1986:209) b Swedish att han inte [ VP köpte boken]. that he not bought the.book '... that he didn't buy the book.' Notwithstanding the success of (2), rich agreement has proven difficult to define. One of the most well-crafted characterizations is that of Rohrbacher (1999:116-117):
A typology of complement insubordination in Dutch
This paper presents an analysis of complement insubordination in Dutch, i.e structures that are formally marked as subordinate complement clauses but conventionally used as main clauses. We develop a typology of seven distinct construction types (in three semantic domains), none of which have been analysed in detail before. From a more general perspective, we show that insubordinate constructions provide a fresh perspective on the analysis of modality and evaluation, with semantic parameters that are not found in more typical exponents like modal verbs. In addition, we show that it is difficult to develop a schematic generalization over the different construction types, in spite of their apparent formal similarity as complement structures. We argue that this points to separate developmental trajectories for the different types, with a point of origin in different main-subordinate constructions, and different degrees of conventionalization for the resulting insubordinate constructions.