Norwegian som: The complementizer that climbed to the matrix Left Periphery and caused Verb Second violations *

• Main Authors: Marit Westergaard, Øystein A. Vangsnes, Terje Lohndal
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Tromsø
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.359.5735; http://www.ciscl.unisi.it/gg60/papers/westergaard_et_al.pdf

In this paper we consider the connection between Verb Second violations in Norwegian dialects and the possibility for insertion of the complementizer som under extraction of a wh-subject from an embedded clause, i.e. in *that-trace contexts. We argue that it is the latter grammatical property that has led to the lifting of the Verb Second requirement in wh-clauses in Norwegian dialects. This deviates from earlier proposals which argue that this historical development starts with short wh-items being analyzed as X°s and inserted in the head position that otherwise attracts the finite verb. Luigi: Thank you so much for truly inspiring academic papers as well as face-to-face interaction on various occasions in Siena, in Tromsø, and elsewhere. 1.