Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 2015, Síða 111

The results presented here are based on two written questionnaires administered to 52
speakers of Övdalian during fieldwork in Älvdalen in central Sweden. The first question-
naire included minimal pairs contrasting Vfin−Adv order and Adv−Vfin order in various
types of subject-initial embedded clauses with sentence adverbs like int/it ‘not’, older/aldri
‘never’ and oltiett ‘always’, see the examples in (1) below. The second questionnaire inclu-
ded minimal pairs/triplets of Embedded Topicalization (ET) as in (2) and transitive exple-
tive constructions (TECs) as in (3). A subset of the speakers (34 in total) also performed
verbal paradigm fill-in tasks. The method can be described as ‘supervised questionnaire
completion’ (see discussions in Cornips and Poletto 2005).
(1)a. Du wet at påitjin twä’dd oltiett biln.
you know that boy-the washed always car-the
‘You know that the son always washed the car.’
b. Du wet at påitjin oltiett twä’dd biln.
you know that boy-the always washed car-the
‘You know that the son always washed the car.’
(2)a. An wart iwari at an add it lesið ǫ-dar buotję.
he became aware that he had not read she-there book-the
‘He discovered that he had not read that book.’
b. An wart iwari at ǫ-dar buotję add an it lesið.
he became aware that she-there book-the had he not read
‘He discovered that he had not read that book.’
(3)a. Nog autleningger tjyöpt gamtstugų.
some foreigners bought old-house-the
‘Some foreigners bought the old house.’
b. Eð tjyöpt nog autleningger gamtstugų.
EXPL bought some foreigners old-house-the
‘Some foreigners bought the old house.’
In modern Övdalian, verb movement in various types of embedded clauses appears to be
on its way out. This is similar to the situation in Faroese, but unlike in Faroese (and
Icelandic), TECs are heavily degraded in Övdalian. ET seems to obey restrictions that are
similar to those of the other Scandinavian languages. It turns out that the older speakers
of Övdalian allow the Vfin-Adv order more freely than the younger speakers, and the con-
ditions for subject-initial V2 depend to a certain extent on the type of embedded clause as
well as the type of finite verb and adverb. The results from a verbal paradigm fill-in task
reveal substantial variation in the use of verbal affixes and, interestingly, a tendency, espe-
cially by the younger speakers, to simplify the verbal morphology.
The relevance of these results for different versions of the Rich Agreement Hy -
pothesis is discussed in the paper (Holmberg & Platzack 1995, Vikner 1995, 1997, Jonas
1996, Rohrbacher 1999, Bobaljik 2002, Thráinsson 1996, Bobaljik and Thráinsson 1998,
Thráinsson 2010, Koeneman and Zeijlstra 2014). In short, it is maintained that two kinds
of S2-order can be found in Övdalian embedded clauses (see a similar analysis of Faroese
in Heycock et al. 2012 and Angantýsson 2013). On the one hand there is V-to-C and hence
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