Cross Linguistic Variation in the Realm of Support Verbs
(2008) Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop p.1-25- Abstract
- In this paper I investigate a particular case of cross-Germanic variation, namely a number of syntactic differences with respect to VP Topicalization, VP Ellipsis and VP Pronomi-nalization. Swedish and English turn out to be the two extremes, with Danish and Norwegaian in between; Icelandic is like Swedish, but lacks the possibility to topicalize VP.
Arguments are given for the analysis that the support verb is a spelled-out little v, and that VP Topicalization is a fronting of a √P. With respect to tense, there are two options for the root: it may lack tense features, or it may have an uninterpretable but valued tense feature; lit-tle v always has an uninterpretable but valued tense featur. The first option is chosen by... (More) - In this paper I investigate a particular case of cross-Germanic variation, namely a number of syntactic differences with respect to VP Topicalization, VP Ellipsis and VP Pronomi-nalization. Swedish and English turn out to be the two extremes, with Danish and Norwegaian in between; Icelandic is like Swedish, but lacks the possibility to topicalize VP.
Arguments are given for the analysis that the support verb is a spelled-out little v, and that VP Topicalization is a fronting of a √P. With respect to tense, there are two options for the root: it may lack tense features, or it may have an uninterpretable but valued tense feature; lit-tle v always has an uninterpretable but valued tense featur. The first option is chosen by Eng-lish, Danish and Norwegian, which among other things has the consequence that the fronted root phrase has a non-finite verb, and that these languages accept VP Ellipsis. The second op-tion is chosen by all the Scandinavian languages, Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish, and is compatible with VP Topicalization with a tensed verb in the fronted part, no VP Ellip-sis but VP Pronominalization. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/1258912
- author
- Platzack, Christer LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2008
- type
- Contribution to conference
- publication status
- submitted
- subject
- keywords
- Support verb, VP topicalization, VP Ellipsis, Scandinavian languages, VP Pronominalization, English
- pages
- 25 pages
- conference name
- Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop
- conference dates
- 2008-06-12 - 2008-06-13
- project
- TEJS
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- additional info
- The information about affiliations in this record was updated in December 2015. The record was previously connected to the following departments: Swedish (015011001)
- id
- cb0478b7-852d-401f-8892-7dfdced0c773 (old id 1258912)
- date added to LUP
- 2016-04-04 13:42:06
- date last changed
- 2018-11-21 21:15:42
@misc{cb0478b7-852d-401f-8892-7dfdced0c773, abstract = {{In this paper I investigate a particular case of cross-Germanic variation, namely a number of syntactic differences with respect to VP Topicalization, VP Ellipsis and VP Pronomi-nalization. Swedish and English turn out to be the two extremes, with Danish and Norwegaian in between; Icelandic is like Swedish, but lacks the possibility to topicalize VP.<br/><br> Arguments are given for the analysis that the support verb is a spelled-out little v, and that VP Topicalization is a fronting of a √P. With respect to tense, there are two options for the root: it may lack tense features, or it may have an uninterpretable but valued tense feature; lit-tle v always has an uninterpretable but valued tense featur. The first option is chosen by Eng-lish, Danish and Norwegian, which among other things has the consequence that the fronted root phrase has a non-finite verb, and that these languages accept VP Ellipsis. The second op-tion is chosen by all the Scandinavian languages, Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish, and is compatible with VP Topicalization with a tensed verb in the fronted part, no VP Ellip-sis but VP Pronominalization.}}, author = {{Platzack, Christer}}, keywords = {{Support verb; VP topicalization; VP Ellipsis; Scandinavian languages; VP Pronominalization; English}}, language = {{eng}}, pages = {{1--25}}, title = {{Cross Linguistic Variation in the Realm of Support Verbs}}, year = {{2008}}, }