Editorial: Perspectives on Nordic phonology

In this editorial, we first offer a glimpse of the scope and traditions of studying phonology in the Nordic countries and how these are mirrored in the aims of FiNo and the topics presented at its 2020 workshop. We then summarize the individual contributions to the volume, showing how they connect nicely with an overarching frame­work, which we call ‘Autosegmental Metrical Optimality Theory’.

English relative clauses in a cross-Germanic perspective

The article talk examines the distribution of relativising strategies in English in a cross-Germanic perspective, arguing that English is quite unique among Germanic languages both regarding the number of available options and their distribution. The differences from other Germanic languages (both West Germanic and Scandinavian) are primarily due to the historical changes affecting the case and gender system in English more generally. The loss of case and gender on the original singular neuter relative pronoun facilitated its reanalysis as a complementiser. The effect of the case system can also be observed in properties that are not evidently related to case. Specifically, choice between the pronoun strategy and the complementiser strategy is known to show differences according to the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy. While English shows a subject vs. oblique distinction in this respect, matching its nominative/oblique case system, German dialects show a subject/direct object vs. oblique distinction, matching the nominative/accusative/oblique case setting in the language. The particular setting in English is thus not dependent on e.g. a single parameter but on various factors that are otherwise present in other Germanic languages as well, and it is ultimately the complex interplay of these factors that results in the particular setup.

German Passives and English Benefactives

In both English benefactive constructions (John baked Mary a cake) and German kriegen/bekommen-passives (Er kriegte einen Stift geschenkt ‘He got a pen gifted’), the theme argument is accusative-marked but has no way of getting structural accusative case. In English benefactive constructions, this is because the beneficiary argument intervenes between the voice head and the theme, and in German kriegen/bekommen-passives, it is because there is no active voice head. This paper proposes that, in both languages, the applicative head introducing the beneficiary/recipient (more generally, the affectee argument), comes with an extra case feature that can license case on the theme argument. In English, this non-canonical accusative case feature comes with the regular applicative head introducing the beneficiary argument. In contrast, in German, it comes with a defective applicative head which introduces the recipient but is unable to assign to it the inherent dative case that normally comes with the Affectee theta-role. The paper offers a unified analysis of English and German double object constructions and also of German werden (‘be’) and kriegen/bekommen (‘get’)-passives.

How to become an adjective when you're not strong (enough)?

This article attempts to put a new spin on (the development of) weakly inflected adjectives, with a partic- ular focus on North Germanic, by recycling some traditional ideas. Point of departure is the observation that the Proto-Norse demonstrative hinn had ended up as a functional element in the extended adjectival projection in Old Norse – not as a definite article in the extended nominal projection (an otherwise well- known grammaticalization process). Following the old idea that weak inflection originally involved nominalization, it is argued that weak “adjectives” maintained their nominal status beyond Proto-Gemanic. Thus the weakening demonstrative originally occurs as a determiner in some nominal projection. At some stage prior to Old Norse, this constellation is reanalyzed at the phrasal level, from noun phrase to adjectival phrase, a process in which the demonstrative gets “trapped” inside the adjectival projection and is reanalyzed as adjectival article. This process termed phrasal reanalysis is operative at three levels, (i) lexical: N0 >> A0; (ii) phrasal: NP >> AP; (iii) functional: demonstrative >> adjectival article.

A New Modal Cycle

A new set of modals is appearing in contemporary English. The epistemic modals with perfect have are forming a new class including mighta, coulda, woulda, shoulda, and musta, when they are used with an additional have and without a (present) perfect meaning. I look at their structure and examine possible determinacy violations when they (and the core modals) move to C. The data come from corpus and internet sources; the study is not a quantitative one because the change is not yet particularly frequent.

COMP-trace effects in German: the role of processing

This article reports on the processing and comprehension of COMP-trace violations in German. The status of the COMP-trace effect in German is a controversial issue. It has been argued that judgments on long-distance (LD) subject questions are distorted because of parsing problems in the main clause, the embedded clause, or both, and that LD subject questions are sometimes misinterpreted as object questions. Our self-paced reading data shows that processing difficulties with LD subject questions occur in the embedded clause, not the main clause, particularly at the point at which an embedded subject gap is postulated. Our study furthermore shows that readers are garden-pathed towards object readings of subject long-distance questions, but only when the embedded clause contains a case-ambiguous DP. A case-ambiguous DP thus functions as a superficial work-around for a COMP-trace violation. As we argue, our data support the view that German has a genuine COMP-trace effect and that potential parsing problems only occur in the context of local ambiguities. We propose that differences in the magnitude and fatality of COMP-trace violations between languages can be explained by formulating the COMP-trace effect in terms of accessibility, rather than a categorical syntactic constraint.

On the (non-)expletive uses of the preverbal negative ne/en in the history of (Low) German and Dutch

This article presents novel data from Middle High German, Middle Low German and Middle Dutch showing that two phenomena which often have been treated as one, namely the single former negativemarker ne/en appearing in adverbial and complement clauses, have to be treated as distinct phenomena. I argue that only in complement clauses, ne/en is a paratactic negation marker, while in adverbial clausesit functions as an exceptive and adversative discourse marker. In these contexts, I refer to ne/en as post-cyclical Furthermore, I propose a scenario as to how the reanalysis from negation to exceptive markerproceeded.

Remarks on prepositional object clauses in Germanic

This paper analyses the variation we find in the realization of finite clausal complements in the position of prepositional objects in a set of Germanic languages. The Germanic languages differ with respect to whether prepositions can directly select a clause (North Germanic) or not and instead need a prepositional proform (Continental West Germanic). Within the Continental West Germanic languages, we find further differences with respect to the constituent structures. We propose that German strong vs. weak prepositional proforms (e.g. drauf vs. darauf) differ with respect to their syntax, while this is not the case for the Dutch forms (ervan vs. daarvan). What the Germanic languages under consideration share is that the prepositional element can be covert, except in English. English shows only limited evidence for the presence of P with finite clauses in the position of prepositional objects generally, but only with a selected set of verbs. This investigation is a first step towards a broader study of the nature of clauses in prepositional object positions and the implications for the syntax of clausal complementation.

Wenn {aber} der Topf {aber} nun ein Loch hat ...

While the literature on adversative aber in German to date has almost exclusively focused on independent clauses, and at best treated its occurrence in adverbial clauses in passing as a variant of postinitial aber in independent clauses (M´etrich and Courdier 1995, Pasch et al. 2003), the current paper focuses on the distribution and interpretation of adversative aber in adverbial clauses. It is shown that aber can have two different scopes, either contrasting two clauses, or two smaller contituents. These scopes are shown to have different prosodic correlates. It is argued that aber occupies the specifier of a functional projection in the upper middle field, and that it interacts with the mapping from syntax to prosody. Some displacements are argued to be interface-driven, to enable constituents to reach or avoid positions where they can be assigned a (contrastive) pitch accent. The diachronic development of adversative aber is shown to interact with the diachronic development of the Wackernagel position for unstressed pronouns.