Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2011, Page 174

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Elisabet Engdahl
The thesis deals mainly with the structure of embedded clauses, but the struc-
ture of main clauses is discussed briefly in chapter 2 where the following structure
is given for main clauses (p. 22, (7)), essentially following Rizzi’s (1997) proposal:
(9) Extended CP Structure
ForceP
In verb second languages, like Icelandic, one constituent has to move to the spec-
ifier position of the highest projection, Force P. Notice that in Rizzi’s structure,
primarily motivated on the basis of Italian, there is one TopicP (TopP) under
ForceP and one under FocusP (FocP).
Question 7: If available functional projections are parametrized cross-linguistical-
ly, as you propose, why do you assume two TopPs in a verb second language?
Question 8: On your analysis, the main difference between main clauses and
embedded ðd-clauses is the order of ForceP and Top P. Why not make the sim-
pler assumption that main clauses and ad-clauses have the same CP-structure?
One clear strength of the thesis is the systematic comparison between speak-
ers’ judgments on Icelandic, Faroese, West Jutlandic and Övdalian, which I un-
fortunately do not have time to comment on in detail. I will just address one ques-
tion that Ásgrímur raises with respect to Övdalian. Despite the fact that Övdalian
has maintained rich verb inflection, the speakers don’t generally accept the expect-
ed verb adverb order in embedded clauses, with one exception. They are more
willing to accept this order in indirect questions, which the author finds puzzling.
I believe that the reason for this is an increased tendency in contemporary
Swedish to use direct questions in positions where one would expect embedded
questions. This usage is particularly widespread among politicians who prefer to
phrase a contribution as in (íoa) rather than as in (íob) which would be expected
given the matrix verb ta redapá (‘find out’):
(10) a. Vi ska ta reda pá vart har dessa pengar tagit vagen?
we shall find out where has this money taken road-the
‘We will find out: where has this money gone?’