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OV and V-to-I in the history of Swedish

  • Erik Magnusson Petzell
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Historical Linguistics 2009
This chapter is in the book Historical Linguistics 2009

Abstract

This paper relates the loss of V-to-I in Swedish, which occurs in the beginning of the 17th century, to changes in the OV system that take place a century before. Prior to ca. 1500, OV is predominantly derived by movement of an argument (Arg) within a single VP (Sg-movement). Such a derivation generates OV patterns where Arg either precedes a non-finite but follows a finite verb (VfArgVnf) or precedes a single finite verb (ArgVf). In the 16th century, the preference for Sg-movement of Arg is reanalysed as a preference for movement to the highest VP (H-movement). H-preference favours ArgVf and the previously marginal ArgVnfVf, but disfavours the former dominant VfArgVnf. Unlike VfArgVnf, both ArgVf and ArgVnfVf have Vf in situ, i.e. they provide cues for new acquirers of the language that V-to-I does not apply.

Abstract

This paper relates the loss of V-to-I in Swedish, which occurs in the beginning of the 17th century, to changes in the OV system that take place a century before. Prior to ca. 1500, OV is predominantly derived by movement of an argument (Arg) within a single VP (Sg-movement). Such a derivation generates OV patterns where Arg either precedes a non-finite but follows a finite verb (VfArgVnf) or precedes a single finite verb (ArgVf). In the 16th century, the preference for Sg-movement of Arg is reanalysed as a preference for movement to the highest VP (H-movement). H-preference favours ArgVf and the previously marginal ArgVnfVf, but disfavours the former dominant VfArgVnf. Unlike VfArgVnf, both ArgVf and ArgVnfVf have Vf in situ, i.e. they provide cues for new acquirers of the language that V-to-I does not apply.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Foreword & Acknowledgements vii
  4. Editors’ introduction ix
  5. Part I. General and specific issues of language change
  6. Competing reinforcements 3
  7. On the reconstruction of experiential constructions in (Late) Proto-Indo-European 31
  8. Criteria for differentiating inherent and contact-induced changes in language reconstruction 49
  9. Misparsing and syntactic reanalysis 69
  10. How different is prototype change? 89
  11. The syntactic reconstruction of alignment and word order 107
  12. Part II. Linguistic variation and change in Germanic
  13. The Dutch-Afrikaans participial prefix ge- 131
  14. Diachronic changes in long-distance dependencies 155
  15. Changes in the use of the Frisian quantifiers ea/oait “ever” between 1250 and 1800 171
  16. On the development of the perfect (participle) 191
  17. OV and V-to-I in the history of Swedish 211
  18. Ethnicity as an independent factor of language variation across space 231
  19. The sociolinguistics of spelling 253
  20. Part III. Linguistic variation and change in Greek
  21. Dative loss and its replacement in the history of Greek 277
  22. Word order variation in New Testament Greek wh-questions 293
  23. Part IV. Linguistic change in Romance
  24. The morphological evolution of infinitive, future and conditional forms in Occitan 317
  25. The evolution of the encoding of direction in the history of French 333
  26. Velle -type prohibitions in Latin 355
  27. The use and development of habere + infinitive in Latin 373
  28. Index 399
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.320.11pet

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Foreword & Acknowledgements vii
  4. Editors’ introduction ix
  5. Part I. General and specific issues of language change
  6. Competing reinforcements 3
  7. On the reconstruction of experiential constructions in (Late) Proto-Indo-European 31
  8. Criteria for differentiating inherent and contact-induced changes in language reconstruction 49
  9. Misparsing and syntactic reanalysis 69
  10. How different is prototype change? 89
  11. The syntactic reconstruction of alignment and word order 107
  12. Part II. Linguistic variation and change in Germanic
  13. The Dutch-Afrikaans participial prefix ge- 131
  14. Diachronic changes in long-distance dependencies 155
  15. Changes in the use of the Frisian quantifiers ea/oait “ever” between 1250 and 1800 171
  16. On the development of the perfect (participle) 191
  17. OV and V-to-I in the history of Swedish 211
  18. Ethnicity as an independent factor of language variation across space 231
  19. The sociolinguistics of spelling 253
  20. Part III. Linguistic variation and change in Greek
  21. Dative loss and its replacement in the history of Greek 277
  22. Word order variation in New Testament Greek wh-questions 293
  23. Part IV. Linguistic change in Romance
  24. The morphological evolution of infinitive, future and conditional forms in Occitan 317
  25. The evolution of the encoding of direction in the history of French 333
  26. Velle -type prohibitions in Latin 355
  27. The use and development of habere + infinitive in Latin 373
  28. Index 399
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