A number of European languages have undergone a change from object-verb to verb-object order. We focus on the change in English and Icelandic, showing that while the structural change was the same, it took place at different times and different ways in the two languages, triggered by different E-language changes. As seen from the English viewpoint, low-level facts of inflection morphology may express ...

All Germanic languages make extensive use of verb-particle combinations (known as separable-prefix verbs in the OV languages). I show some basic differences here distinguishing the Scandinavian type from the OV West Germanic languages, with English superficially patterning with Scandinavian but actually manifesting a distinct type. Specifically, I argue that the P projection is split into p and P ...

On the basis of syntactic and morphological evidence from West Greenlandic (WG) antipassive (AP) constructions, I argue against the view that the AP affix is nominal. The fact that the transitivizing and the antipassive affixes in a number of verbs are in complementary distribution, leads me to conclude that they both realize a light verb, transitivizing v, one on the ERG-NOM pattern, the other on ...

In the so-called 'double definiteness' varieties of Scandinavian (Norwegian, Swedish, and Faroese), a definite nominal phrase that contains no adjective or numeral has a suffixed article but no prenominal determiner. But if there are adjectives or numerals in a definite nominal phrase, the suffixed article co-occurs with a prenominal determiner. In my analysis, this pattern is related to the requirement ...

This article reports on a study of three children acquiring a dialect of Norwegian which allows two different word orders in certain types of WH-questions, verb second (V2) and and verb third (V3). The latter is only allowed after monosyllabic WH-words, while the former, which is the result of verb movement, is the word order found in all other main clauses in the language. It is shown that both V2 ...

This paper explores how the process of relexification can contribute to the understanding of the genesis of the new Norwegian dialect of Sappen in Nordreisa. The dialect has emerged in the context of language shift from Finnish to Norwegian, and the dialect syntax has features that might be regarded as products of relexification. One example is declarative main clauses with the finite verb in the ...

In this paper we will discuss how economy principles interact with cues in the input in bilingual first language acquisition. We will look at the acquisition of verb placement in a child acquiring English and Norwegian simultaneously. Based on data from this child, it will be argued that when faced with ambiguous cues with respect to the verb movement parameter, children do not necessarily adopt the ...

This article deals with the L2 acquisition of differences between Norwegian and English passives, and presents data to show that the acquisition of these differences by Norwegian L2 acquirers of English cannot be fully explained by positive evidence, cues, conservativism or economy. Rather, it is argued, it is natural to consider whether indirect negative evidence may facilitate acquisition by ...

Most Slavic prefixes can be assigned to one of two large cate- gories, lexical and superlexical. The lexical prefixes are like Germanic particles, in having resultative meanings, often spatial, but often id- iosyncratic. The superlexical prefixes are like adverbs or auxiliary verbs, having aspectual and quantificational meanings. I present a syntactic account of the two types of prefix, arguing ...