Microvariation in object positions : Negative Shift in

In the Scandinavian languages, sentential negation must be licensed outside VP, necessitating leftward movement of negative objects, Negative Shift (NegS). While string-vacuous NegS is possible in all Scandinavian varieties, there is a fair amount of cross-linguistic variation as to non-string-vacuous NegS. In particular, the varieties contrast in which constituents can be crossed by NegS and whether or not crossing of a certain constituent requires the presence of an intervening verb. The paper discusses which difficulties for syntactic analysis arise from the variation as to the applicability of NegS and why other movement operations do not display such a range of variation.