Finite verb movement in Scandinavian embedded clauses

Verb Movement ◽  
1994 ◽  
pp. 117-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sten Vikner
2020 ◽  
pp. 665-681
Author(s):  
Molly Diesing ◽  
Beatrice Santorini

Embedded Verb Second (V2) clauses have been analysed as embedded main clauses or in terms of selection. This chapter presents data from both corpora and native speaker judgements showing that Verb Second order in embedded clauses in Yiddish goes well beyond what can be explained by either of the above approaches, with V2 possible and attested in interrogatives as well as declaratives. Adjunction of adverbials to V2 clauses is possible as well, yielding orders with the finite verb in third position (V3). But V3 resulting from lack of verb movement, as is seen in Mainland Scandinavian and (optionally) in Icelandic, is not found.


2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-98
Author(s):  
Katerina Somers

Abstract This article investigates the status of so-called verb-final declaratives in Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch, with a focus on whether clauses in which there is no apparent subordinator and the finite verb occurs later than the expected verb-first or verb-second position can be treated as verb-third (V3) clauses, as they are defined for Old High German in works such as Axel (2007) and Tomaselli (1995). Drawing on a set of 746 clauses, I argue that there is no evidence that the finite verbs in these clauses have undergone verb movement, as is claimed in the aforementioned works, nor are the asyndetic verb-late clauses with a verb in surface third position consistent with the patterns identified in the generative literature for the V3 type.


Nordlyd ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. pp
Author(s):  
Eva Engels

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 14.2pt 0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;" lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">In Faroese, Negative Shift of a prepositional complement is subject to variation across dialects, as well as to variation across speakers of the same dialect as regards preposition stranding and pied-piping. In particular, Negative Shift of a prepositional complement is possible for all speakers in the presence of a main verb <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in situ</em>, stranding the preposition. Only if the main verb undergoes finite verb movement does dialectal and inter-speaker variation arise. In Icelandic, in contrast, the choice between preposition stranding and pied-piping during Negative Shift seems to be independent of verb position and to be lexically determined by the verb-preposition combination instead.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 14.2pt 12pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;" lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>These asymmetries will be accounted for within Fox and Pesetsky's (2003, 2005) cyclic linearization model, which requires non-string-vacuous movement to proceed through the left edge of Spell-out domains, deriving cross-linguistic variation as to Negative Shift from differences in the availability of these left-edge positions. Thereby, pied-piping is considered a last resort strategy, possible only if the prepositional complement cannot undergo Negative Shift on its own due to the unavailability of the relevant left-edge position.</span></span></p>


2003 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luciana R. Storto

Este artigo tem como objetivo mostrar que o Karitiana, uma língua da família Arikém, tronco Tupi, falada em Rondônia, Brasil, é uma língua V-2, que apresenta movimento obrigatório do verbo para a posição de complementizador (C) nas sentenças matrizes. O verbo transitivo, invariavelmente, ocorre em primeira ou segunda posição em relação a seus argumentos nas sentenças principais, quando aparece, obrigatoriamente, marcado por tempo e concordância. Já nas sentenças subordinadas, o verbo aparece nú na última posição. Apresentamos evidências de movimento verbal ao discutirmos a ordem dos constituintes, a posição dos núcleos funcionais nas sentenças, e as possibilidades de adjunção adverbial na língua. Abstract This paper aims to show that Karitiana, a language of the Arikém family, Tupi stock, spoken in Rondônia, Brazil, is a verb-second language, which presents obligatory movement of the verb to complementizer position (C) in root clauses. The transitive verb, invariably, occurs in first or second position with respect to its arguments in matrix clauses, when it is marked by tense and agreement morphology. In embedded clauses, the verb is bare and occurs in final position. We present evidence of verb movement through a discussion of constituent order, the position of functional heads in the sentence, and adverb adjunction possibilities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-42
Author(s):  
Maud Westendorp

In this article, I present data from the Nordic Word order Database (NWD) on word order in Faroese embedded clauses. I discuss the methods used in the data elicitation, data analysis, and present a first overview of the patterns in the dataset. The NWD contains a total of 4,752 embedded clauses elicited from 33 native Faroese speakers, focussing on embedded wh-questions, and the placement of the finite verb with respect to adverbs in different types of complements. The results from the Faroese fieldwork largely confirm the word order patterns discussed in the literature. There is very little variation in the word order of embeddded wh-questions in the NWD-data. Verb > Adverb order is most common in declarative bridge-verb complements, whereas non-bridge, and wh-complements disfavour this order.


Author(s):  
Alexandru Nicolae

This chapter analyses two distinct phenomena found in old and modern Romance varieties, namely ‘interpolation’ and ‘scrambling’, against the data of old Romanian. Unified by the non-adjacency between higher functional elements (clitics and auxiliary verbs) and the lexical verb, interpolation and scrambling are discussed under the blanket term ‘discontiguous linearizations in the sentential core’ and are shown to be derived in old Romanian through lower verb movement along the clausal spine. The existence of lower verb movement in old Romanian supports an important aspect of the diachrony of V-raising in Romanian and in the Romance languages: generalized V-to-I movement is not attained only through the reanalysis of a relaxed V2 grammar (specific to matrix clauses), but also through a gradual process of V-raising to the left along the clausal spine (characterizing embedded clauses). Discontiguous linearizations involving higher functional elements and modal complex predicates bring evidence for the analysis of interpolation and scrambling.


Literator ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-154
Author(s):  
H. W. Broekman

The movement operation Verb Second moves the finite verb from its base-generated position in VP to C via the I node within the Chomsky (1986) framework. As the finite verb and the complementiser are in complementary distribution, the above predicts that, contrary to fact, Verb Second is not possible in embedded clauses. However, in Frisian and Swedish Verb Second does occur in embedded clauses. This entails that a lexical complementiser does not always prevent a finite verb from undergoing Verb Second. 'The aim of this paper is to provide a survey of Old English and Middle English root clauses particularly with respect to Verb Second. Old English does not strictly conform to Verb Second in declarative root clauses. In Old English finite verbs also occur in first position and in third position in declarative root clauses. A comparison with Icelandic data will be provided as this language displays all three verb placements in declarative head main clauses as well.


Nordlyd ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristine Bentzen

The position of the verb(s) in embedded non-V2 contexts varies in Norwegian dialects. In Eastern Norwegian (EastN), all verbs have to follow all adverbs in non-V2 contexts. In Troms&oslash; Northern Norwegian (TrNN) main verbs and non-finite auxiliaries have to follow all adverbs, but finite auxiliaries may precede adverbs they take scope over. In Regional Northern Norwegian (ReNN) all finite verbs (main/auxiliary) may precede all adverbs, and non-finite auxiliaries may precede adverbs they take scope over. These data are accounted for within a remnant movement approach. The variation between the three dialects is argued to follow from differences in how selectional features on auxiliaries and T are checked. It is suggested that auxiliaries are associated with a pair of functional projections (so-called lifters): a VP lifter below and an AdvP lifter above. An auxiliary with these lifters &lsquo;sinks&rsquo; below adverbs it takes scope over. Overt feature checking (through adjacency) occurs when the lifters are present; covert feature checking occurs when the lifters are absent. In EastN, overt feature checking, and the lifters, is obligatory for all auxiliaries; in TrNN this is obligatory for non-finite auxiliaries but optional for finite auxiliaries; in ReNN this is optional for all auxiliaries.


Author(s):  
Kristin Føsker Hagemann ◽  
Signe Laake

Stylistic Fronting (SF) is usually defined as a special kind of fronting, where a constituent (or part of a constituent) which is not the subject is moved to a position that precedes the finite verb. SF is found in both Old Spanish and Old Norwegian. In this chapter we show that the two languages share several common properties regarding fronting patterns in embedded clauses, more specifically in restrictive relative clauses, and that in both languages, apparent heads and unambiguous phrases may be fronted. In both languages a fronted element may cooccur with an overt phrasal subject. These findings contribute to the ongoing debate on the phenomenon of Stylistic Fronting, suggesting that the original strong claims made regarding SF in Icelandic are idiosyncratic, and that the term Stylistic Fronting in fact subsumes several types of movement operations (Labelle & Hirschbühler 2017), some of which have none of the properties originally claimed for Stylistic Fronting in Icelandic. Furthermore, it appears as though the pragmatic effects of the fronting were similar in the two languages; fronting in restrictive relative clauses occurs to check an anaphoric feature (López 2009). The striking parallelisms between Old Spanish, a Romance language, and Old Norwegian, a Germanic one, invites further comparative research on similar syntactic phenomena in the languages.


2020 ◽  
pp. 265-280
Author(s):  
Marit Julien

This chapter addresses the assertion analysis of Mainland Scandinavian embedded declarative V2 clauses. These clauses are identified by having the finite verb preceding all sentence adverbials and/or having a non-subject in initial position. Whereas this word order is mainly found in that-clauses embedded under certain predicates in modern Mainland Scandinavian, it was more generally allowed in Old Scandinavian. The Old Scandinavian word order arguably involved verb movement to the inflectional domain. In modern Mainland Scandinavian it necessarily involves movement to the C-domain, which means that embedded V2 clauses have root properties. On this analysis, they are asserted, and both the illocutionary force and the V2 order are consequences of the presence of a Force head. For most speakers of modern Mainland Scandinavian, direct or indirect assertions can be embedded whenever they are compatible with the semantics of the matrix clause.


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