Weak function word shift

Abstract

The fact that object shift only affects weak pronouns in mainland Scandinavian is seen as an instance of a more general observation that can be made in all Germanic languages: weak function words tend to avoid the edges of larger prosodic domains. This generalisation has been formulated within Optimality Theory in terms of alignment constraints on prosodic structure by Selkirk (1996) in explaining the distribution of prosodically strong and weak forms of English function words, especially modal verbs, prepositions and pronouns. But a purely phonological account fails to integrate the syntactic licensing conditions for object shift in an appropriate way. The standard semantico-syntactic accounts of object shift, on the other hand, fail to explain why it is only weak pronouns that undergo object shift. This paper develops an Optimality theoretic model of the syntax-phonology interface which is based on the interaction of syntactic and prosodic factors. The account can successfully be applied to further related phenomena in English and German.

Norwegian Object Shift as IP-internal topicalization

“…Importantly, these elements cannot cliticize onto the negation or other adverbials, thus making it impossible for pronominal objects to follow negation. Another account of OS that relies heavily on prosodic factors is found in Vogel (2006). Vogel argues that Scandinavian OS is a reflection of a restriction that applies quite generally in the Germanic languages, namely that weak function words tend to be avoided on the edges of larger prosodic domains.…”

Crash-proof syntax and filters

“…In fact, Frampton & Gutmann's suggestion implies a second, even more radical break with the minimalist tradition, given that it is not compatible with the postulate of the autonomy of syntax: this section has shown that a full crash-proof account of Scandinavian object shift and Dutch/German A-scrambling requires that the computational system be made sensitive to a wide variety of non-syntactic properties of the resulting utterances. The Icelandic data in (3) show that the computational system must be made sensitive to the pragmatically defined notions focus and presupposition, the Dutch examples in (4) show that also the meaning of the output representations may play a role, and the fact that Danish object shift is restricted to weak pronouns strongly supports Vogel's (2006b) claim that the phonological properties of the output representation are also relevant. A third problem is that all our objections against Chomsky's filter approach carry over to Frampton & Gutmann's version of crash-proof syntax: incorporating the language-specific restrictions on, e.g.…”

“…We can readily add to this complexity: Scandinavian languages like Danish differ from Icelandic in that they do not exhibit object shift of full noun phrases, although they do have pronominal object shift, which is again sensitive to the position of the verb; cf. Vogel (2006b) and Broekhuis (2008: ch.3) for detailed discussion. This can readily be accounted for by postulating a constraint that favors movement of unstressed pronouns.…”

“…Chomsky (2001: 32ff.). A number of other serious (conceptual) problems for Holmberg's proposal can be found in Vogel (2006b) differ in the presence or absence of an additional lexical property on probe X that forces movement of its goal Y, the so-called strength or epp-feature: when X has this additional feature, the movement in (2c) must apply; when X lacks this feature, the movement in (2c) is blocked for reasons of economy. The second way of making the distinction is to postulate some language-specific filter that selects the resulting representation with or without movement as the optimal one.…”

10 Function words in rhythmic optimisation

“…Weak versions of monosyllabic function words typically contain a reduced vowel and no longer form independent syllables but are incorporated in a neighbouring word. Vogel (2006) has shown that Selkirk's description of English also applies to German and other Germanic languages. Germanic function words are an instructive example of the interplay of syntactic and prosodic constraints.…”