Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2011, Page 159

The Topic ofthe Thesis and an Overview ofMethods and Results 157
Transitive Expletive Construction (TEC)
(5) a. Einhverjir útlendingar keyptu gamla húsið. (Icelandic)
some foreigners bought old house-the
b. Það keyptu einhverjir útlendingar gamla húsið.
EXPL bought some foreigners old house-the
‘Some foreigners bought the old house.’
The Vfin-Adv order as in (ía) is always the default word order in all types of
embedded clauses in Icelandic but it is restricted to certain types of embedded
clauses in the Mainland Scandinavian languages. Adv-Vfin as in (2a) is the default
word order in embedded clauses in the Mainland Scandinavian languages, but it
is heavily restricted in Icelandic ( cf. (ib)). It has been observed that Faroese and
Ovdalian have considerable variation with respect to this construction. In my
study, I explored the extent to which the acceptability of subject-initial V2/V3
depends on the clause type.
Topicalization (3b) is commonly referred to as a root phenomenon in the lit-
erature because its use is mostly restricted to main clauses or “main-clause-like”
embedded clauses in languages like English. It has been claimed that Icelandic
allows Topicalization more freely in embedded clauses (Embedded Topicaliz-
ation) than the Mainland Scandinavian languages. In my thesis I challenge this
claim based on the evidence of my data. I also sketch a description of the status of
Faroese and Övdalian with respect to this claim.
Stylistic Fronting of the type shown in (4-b) is found in Icelandic and Faroese,
most typically in embedded clauses in formal registers but also in main clauses,
where it has an even more archaic or stylistic flavor. Examples of SF are also
known in Övdalian. However, its acceptability in the modern language has never
been compared directly to SF in the Insular Scandinavian languages as I do in my
thesis. In Icelandic and partially in Faroese, Expletive Insertion (4c) is a very clear
“left edge” phenomenon, restricted to clause-initial positions, and it is closely
related to SF, which is why I include it in my research.
Transitive Expletive Constructions, as in (5b), have commonly been assumed
to be a characteristic of languages with “extra” subject positions, most famously
Icelandic (see e.g. Thráinsson 2007:337!^). One part of my agenda was to deter-
mine the extent to which Faroese and Övdalian allow TECs.
There are several theoretical reasons for linking the constructions in (1—5)
together in a single syntactic study. The first is that it is usually assumed that SF,
Topicalization and Expletive Insertion all target a similar, or even the same, posi-
tion to the left of the canonical position of the finite verb. In addition, if one
assumes that verb movement is related to rich verbal morphology (see e.g.
Bobaljik and Thráinsson 1998 and references cited there) and that Övdalian has
rich verbal morphology as Icelandic does, the Adv-Vfin order in languages like
Icelandic and Övdalian raises questions about the nature of V-to-I movement.