Scandinavian Clause Structure and Object Shift

This paper focusses on the theory of clause structure in Icelandic, contrasting it along the way with that of another Scandinavian language, Swedish. I argue that LFG provides a very simple and appealing account of two distinguishing properties of Icelandic: (i) the presence of two apparent subject positions in the `Transitive Expletive' construction, and (ii) the phenomenon of `Object Shift', where a direct object appears to the left of its expected VP-internal position. There is in fact a natural correlation between (i) and (ii) in the LFG analysis, something not successfully captured in any of the many previous analyses. In Icelandic, the Transitive Expletive structure requires the IP-over-S clausal analysis that LFG provides. Object Shift, I argue, is what happens when the object is generated outside of VP. In Icelandic, this possibility arises given the availability of S and its alternative expansion as XP. In contrast, Swedish lacks the Transitive Expletive construction, and so has no clause-internal S structure. Swedish Object Shift only a ects weak pronouns, and this restricted Object Shift is naturally analyzed as attraction to I, again obviating the need for the pronoun to be contained within a surface VP. 1. Subject Positions Icelandic is a Germanic language which shows VO order if both verb and object remain within the VP. Unlike many of the Germanic languages, Icelandic shows symmetric V2 structure, which means that the nite verb appears in second position in both main and embedded clauses. Examples of embedded V2 are shown in (1), taken from Holmberg (1986). (1) a. pad var gott ad hann keypti ekki b okina. it was good that he bought not the-book Ice. b. Eg veit ekki hvers vegna Sigga setur aldrei hlutina a r ettan stad. I know not why Sigga puts never the-things in the right place Ice. The fact that the verb (underlined) in the embedded clause is in the second position can be seen here from its position preceding the negative adverbs in these examples. The standard analysis of Icelandic developed primarily in the Government-Binding and Minimalist Program literature is that the verb appears in the highest functional head position in all nite clause types, and I will adopt this characterization, though not necessarily the details of the actual functional categories proposed in that literature. Swedish is a `mainland Scandinavian' language, which also shows basic VO order within the VP. However, simplifying a little, Swedish only shows V2 in main clauses, as is more typical of the Germanic languages. One famous point of di erence between Icelandic and Swedish is that Icelandic alone allows the Transitive Expletive construction, as seen in the examples in (2), where the verb in second position is preceded by an expletive and immediately followed by the thematic subject. 0I am grateful to Avery Andrews, Joan Bresnan, Lizanne Kaiser and Yukiko Morimoto for useful comments and suggestions. This short paper represents an intermediate stage of my thinking on the phenomena and issues here|a much longer work is in preparation.