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Object shift in Scandinavian languages: The impact of contrasted elements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 September 2013

Maia Andréasson
Maia Andréasson*
Affiliation:
Department of Swedish, University of Gothenburg, Box 200, SE 405 30 Göteborg, Sweden. maia.andreasson@svenska.gu.se
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Abstract

This paper argues for a unified analysis of mainland Scandinavian pronominal object shift and Icelandic full NP shift. Building on data showing the impact of accessibility on object placement in Swedish, Danish and Icelandic, I propose an Optimality Theoretic analysis where semantic/pragmatic constraints involving accessibility, information structure and contrast interact, but are ranked lower than syntactic constraints on, for example, verb placement. Finally, the impact of prosody on pronominal object shift is discussed.

Keywords

contrastDanishIcelandicinformation structureobject shiftOptimality TheoryScandinavianSwedish
Type
Research Article
Information
Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 36 , Special Issue 2: Object Shift in the Nordic Languages , October 2013 , pp. 187 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © Nordic Association of Linguistics 2013 

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