<OT> New Posting: ROA-740

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 740-0505

Oblique Subjects and Stylistic Fronting in the History of Scandinavian and English: The Role of IP-Spec

Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson <gunnahh at iln.uio.no>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=740


Abstract:
The thesis discusses three morphosyntactic changes in Danish,
Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish and English, namely the loss
of morphological case, loss of V-to-I movement and the loss
of stylistic fronting. The changes are observed on the basis
of Icelandic which has kept all three characteristics.

The hypothesis is that even though the loss of morphological
case causes the loss of DAT-NOM constructions (i.e. sentences
with a dative subject and a nominative object), these constructio
ns are not 'normalized' (made into NOM-ACC) in one step,
but rather through a systematic process which consists of
two different changes. Old English had and Icelandic still
has sentences with a dative subject and nominative object,
in Old and Middle Danish, Middle English and Faroese, these
constructions have changed to sentences with a dative subject
and an accusative object and in Present Day English, Danish,
etc. they have gone one step further and changed to sentences
with a nominative subject and an accusative object.

The synchronic part of the discussion about the DAT-NOM
construction attempts to explain how the finite verb can
show agreement with the nominative object, why non-nominative
subjects must be animate and furthermore, why nominative
objects can only be third person.

The other construction that is discussed is stylistic fronting.
Firstly it is shown that stylistic fronting was possible
in Old and Middle Danish, and that the loss of stylistic
fronting first took place after the loss of V-to-I movement.
The synchronic analysis of stylistic fronting is that stylistic
fronting is driven by an abstract focus feature and that
it is movement into an articulated CP domain. This makes
it possible to explain why stylistic fronting can have a
semantic effect and why there is a difference in the possibility
of stylistic fronting in clauses without a phonetically
realized subject and clauses with a weak subject pronoun.
If it is further assumed that the articulated CP domain
depends on the presence of V-to-I movement, it is possible
to establish a connection between the loss of stylistic
fronting and the loss of V-to-I movement.

The two theoretical frameworks used in the thesis are Optimality
Theory and the Minimalist Program.

Comments: 
Keywords: oblique subjects, nominative objects, harmonic alignment, stylistic fronting, object-verb agreement, loss of case morphology, loss of v-to-i movement
Areas: Syntax,Semantics,Morphology,Historical Linguistics
Type: PhD Dissertation

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=740