Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2011, Page 171

Comments and Questions...
169
(1) a. Eg veit bara um eina mynd sem hann ekki sá. (p.75<(43))
I know only of one movie that he not saw
b. Eg veit bara um eina mynd sem Haraldur ekki sá.
I know only of one movie that Harold not saw
c. Haraldur var eini nemandinn sem ekki hafði lesið bókina. (p. 69 n 47)
Harold was only student-the that not had read book-the
Questiom : Why are examples like (íc) not considered to be relevant in this con-
text?
In the history of Swedish, the V3 word order first emerged in subjectless rel-
ative clauses, the so called kil ('wedge’) construction, according to Pettersson
(1988), whom the author cites. From there the pattern spread to other subordinate
clauses and became the dominant word order in the 17* century. This is appar-
ently not happening in Icelandic since young Icelandic speakers are least likely to
accept V3 order in relative clauses.
Question 2: Do you want to comment on this?
In order to account for the fact that V3 order is sometimes used in Icelandic
embedded clauses, Ásgrímur proposes, following Bobaljik and Thráinsson (1998),
that the V has indeed moved to I, but that the adverb in certain cases can adjoin
above the V (see the structure in (157), p. 106). This adverb movement is restrict-
ed to cases where the adverb is contrastively stressed, as seems plausible in (ía).
This account makes the prediction that negative adverbs which are associates of a
narrow focus and which are unstressed should not appear preverbally in a subor-
dinate clause. Icelandic versions of the English example in (2) are thus expected
not to allow V3 order.
(2) a book that he hadn’t bought for himSELF but for MARY
Question 3: Have you investigated this?
Judgments on Embedded Topicalizations (ET), as illustrated in (3), reveal that
there is a lot of variation and that younger speakers are more reluctant to accept
such sentences than older speakers.
(3) Hann uppgötvaði að þá bók hafði hann ekki lesið. (p. 120, (16))
he discovered that that book had he not read
Ásgrímur also investigates if there is any connection between judgments on
Topicalization and its frequency in Icelandic corpora. There are no instances of
ET in ÍS-TAL but a few were found in the Icelandic Word Frequency Corpus,
see (4):