Successes and shortcomings of phonological accounts of Scandinavian object shift
Lyskawa, Paulina ; Sandstedt, Jade ; Visser, Eline LU
; Young, Nathan
and Lundquist, Björn
(2022)
In Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America
7(1).
- Abstract
- Object shift (OS) is a word order phenomenon in Scandinavian languages where under some circumstances the object appears before a sentential adverb. Despite the frequent assumptions that word order is determined in syntax, and despite the link of OS and syntactic phenomena like V2, there is no consensus that OS is a syntactic phenomenon. Particularly, it has been observed that OS targets specifically prosodically weak elements. This motivated recent analyses of OS as a prosodic phenomenon. We focus on two proposals that look for a synchronic motivation for OS in a correlation between its distribution and some prosodic property: (i) Erteschik-Shir et al. (2020) posit that OS is motivated and modulated by prosodic incorporation, and (ii)... (More)
- Object shift (OS) is a word order phenomenon in Scandinavian languages where under some circumstances the object appears before a sentential adverb. Despite the frequent assumptions that word order is determined in syntax, and despite the link of OS and syntactic phenomena like V2, there is no consensus that OS is a syntactic phenomenon. Particularly, it has been observed that OS targets specifically prosodically weak elements. This motivated recent analyses of OS as a prosodic phenomenon. We focus on two proposals that look for a synchronic motivation for OS in a correlation between its distribution and some prosodic property: (i) Erteschik-Shir et al. (2020) posit that OS is motivated and modulated by prosodic incorporation, and (ii) Hosono (2013) hypothesizes that shifted pronominal objects help facilitate downstep. We identify concrete predictions from both proposals (default prosodic incorporation, and no downstep in unshifted OS-context sentences, respectively) and test them using novel data. The results show that neither of the proposals can be maintained in its original form. In addition to the empirical shortcomings of the prosodic proposals, we explore a missed syntactic generalization regarding the role objecthood plays in OS. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/01491dfc-842d-4482-b71b-d37c7d826719
- author
- Lyskawa, Paulina
; Sandstedt, Jade
; Visser, Eline
LU
; Young, Nathan
and Lundquist, Björn
- publishing date
- 2022
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- word order, prosody, syntax-phonology interface, object shift, Mainland Scandinavian, prosodic incorporation, downstep
- in
- Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America
- volume
- 7
- issue
- 1
- article number
- 5262
- pages
- 15 pages
- ISSN
- 2473-8689
- DOI
- 10.3765/plsa.v7i1.5261
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- no
- id
- 01491dfc-842d-4482-b71b-d37c7d826719
- date added to LUP
- 2023-02-15 10:56:33
- date last changed
- 2023-02-15 13:23:41
@article{01491dfc-842d-4482-b71b-d37c7d826719,
abstract = {{Object shift (OS) is a word order phenomenon in Scandinavian languages where under some circumstances the object appears before a sentential adverb. Despite the frequent assumptions that word order is determined in syntax, and despite the link of OS and syntactic phenomena like V2, there is no consensus that OS is a syntactic phenomenon. Particularly, it has been observed that OS targets specifically prosodically weak elements. This motivated recent analyses of OS as a prosodic phenomenon. We focus on two proposals that look for a synchronic motivation for OS in a correlation between its distribution and some prosodic property: (i) Erteschik-Shir et al. (2020) posit that OS is motivated and modulated by prosodic incorporation, and (ii) Hosono (2013) hypothesizes that shifted pronominal objects help facilitate downstep. We identify concrete predictions from both proposals (default prosodic incorporation, and no downstep in unshifted OS-context sentences, respectively) and test them using novel data. The results show that neither of the proposals can be maintained in its original form. In addition to the empirical shortcomings of the prosodic proposals, we explore a missed syntactic generalization regarding the role objecthood plays in OS.}},
author = {{Lyskawa, Paulina and Sandstedt, Jade and Visser, Eline and Young, Nathan and Lundquist, Björn}},
issn = {{2473-8689}},
keywords = {{word order; prosody; syntax-phonology interface; object shift; Mainland Scandinavian; prosodic incorporation; downstep}},
language = {{eng}},
number = {{1}},
series = {{Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America}},
title = {{Successes and shortcomings of phonological accounts of Scandinavian object shift}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v7i1.5261}},
doi = {{10.3765/plsa.v7i1.5261}},
volume = {{7}},
year = {{2022}},
}