What's first?: on the left periphery in Swedish declaratives
(2012) p.359-372- Abstract
- I present the result of a small investigation of the sentence pattern in a sample of spoken Swedish. As expected, the typical constituent order is SV – more than 70 percent of the declaratives displayed this constituent order. This result is in line with previous investigations, but the figure is higher. An absolute majority of sentences have a pronominal element in sentence initial position, in most cases a subject pronoun, but it could also be an object pronoun or an adverb. Since information structure and prosody are interrelated, this means that there is a strong bias in Swedish to have a backgrounded or thematic element that is prosodically light, immediately preceding the finite verb.
Due to the fact that preverbal doubling,... (More) - I present the result of a small investigation of the sentence pattern in a sample of spoken Swedish. As expected, the typical constituent order is SV – more than 70 percent of the declaratives displayed this constituent order. This result is in line with previous investigations, but the figure is higher. An absolute majority of sentences have a pronominal element in sentence initial position, in most cases a subject pronoun, but it could also be an object pronoun or an adverb. Since information structure and prosody are interrelated, this means that there is a strong bias in Swedish to have a backgrounded or thematic element that is prosodically light, immediately preceding the finite verb.
Due to the fact that preverbal doubling, i.e. the sentence pattern XP – pronominal – FV, is quite common, I suggest, tentatively, a new definition of the V2 constraint, which is based on semantics. In one sense this means that Swedish can be a V3 language; V3 is grammatical, provided the elements preceding the finite verb are semantically indistinct. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/3403711
- author
- Josefsson, Gunlög LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2012
- type
- Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- SVO, subject initial sentences, V2, V3, declaratives
- host publication
- Discourse & Grammar : A Festschrift in Honor of Valéria Molnár
- editor
- Brandtler, Johan ; Håkansson, David ; Huber, Stefan and Klingvall, Eva
- pages
- 359 - 372
- publisher
- Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University
- ISBN
- 978-91-637-0411-6
- 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
- f340b5e4-1223-4a60-9842-e438b9b5899a (old id 3403711)
- date added to LUP
- 2016-04-04 11:21:36
- date last changed
- 2018-11-21 21:04:18
@inbook{f340b5e4-1223-4a60-9842-e438b9b5899a, abstract = {{I present the result of a small investigation of the sentence pattern in a sample of spoken Swedish. As expected, the typical constituent order is SV – more than 70 percent of the declaratives displayed this constituent order. This result is in line with previous investigations, but the figure is higher. An absolute majority of sentences have a pronominal element in sentence initial position, in most cases a subject pronoun, but it could also be an object pronoun or an adverb. Since information structure and prosody are interrelated, this means that there is a strong bias in Swedish to have a backgrounded or thematic element that is prosodically light, immediately preceding the finite verb.<br/><br> Due to the fact that preverbal doubling, i.e. the sentence pattern XP – pronominal – FV, is quite common, I suggest, tentatively, a new definition of the V2 constraint, which is based on semantics. In one sense this means that Swedish can be a V3 language; V3 is grammatical, provided the elements preceding the finite verb are semantically indistinct.}}, author = {{Josefsson, Gunlög}}, booktitle = {{Discourse & Grammar : A Festschrift in Honor of Valéria Molnár}}, editor = {{Brandtler, Johan and Håkansson, David and Huber, Stefan and Klingvall, Eva}}, isbn = {{978-91-637-0411-6}}, keywords = {{SVO; subject initial sentences; V2; V3; declaratives}}, language = {{eng}}, pages = {{359--372}}, publisher = {{Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University}}, title = {{What's first?: on the left periphery in Swedish declaratives}}, year = {{2012}}, }