Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2011, Síða 176

ÁSGRÍMUR ANGANTÝSSON
Replies to Elisabet Engdahl’s Questions
What follows is an attempt to give an idea of how I answered the questions that
Elisabet Engdahl asked at the defence.6
Reply to question i: A central pre-VP adverb can easily occur before the finite
verb in clauses where the subject has been relativized:
(1) Haraldur var eini nemandinn sem ekki hafði lesið bókina.
Harold was only student-the that not had read book-the
‘Harold was the only student that hadn’t read the book.’
Examples of this kind cannot be used as a comparison with clauses with an overt
subject because in (1) the adverb might have been moved by Stylistic Fronting to
a position in front of the verb in I (the head of IP).
Reply to question 2: In my view, SF of sentential adverbs can be ambiguous as evi-
dence for V-to-I movement in a language that has lost (or is losing) the relevant
inflectional distinctions for a split IP. I assume that this is what happened in the
historical development of the Mainland Scandinavian languages and perhaps this
is the current situation in Faroese. However, since Icelandic still preserves its
independent tense and agreement morphology there is no reason to assume that
SF counts as evidence against V-to-I movement.
Reply to questiony. Subject-initial V3 is usually most felicitous when the sentence
adverb is stressed. In (2) we can see Icelandic versions of your example from
English where the negation must be unstressed for semantic reasons:
(2) a. Bók sem hann hafði ekki keypt fyrir SJÁLFAN SIG heldur fyrir MARÍU.
book that he had not bought for himself but for Mary
b. ??Bók sem hann ekki hafði keypt fyrir SJÁLFAN SIG heldur fyrir MARÍU
book that he not had bought for himself but for Mary
I did not investigate this in my thesis but example fyb) is consistent with the pre-
diction that you point out.
6 The defence was largely in the form of a dialog or questions and answers and I only
had some notes from the defence to assist my memory. Hence this cannot be exactly what
I said, but I hope it is reasonably accurate.
íslenskt mál33 (2011), 174-176. © 2011 íslenska málfrœðifélagið, ReykjavíL