Everything out! Evacuating the Icelandic vP
Jim Wood
August 2018 

In this short paper, I pursue the consequences of the idea that in Icelandic, all vP-internal material— the verb, its arguments, everything—evacuates the vP in the course of ordinary derivations. The claim here is that if we start with the assumption that everything evacuates the verb phrase as part of the normal course of affairs in Icelandic, a number of otherwise unrelated puzzles about Icelandic syntax may fall into place, including the absence of vP-topicalization and vP-ellipsis. Pseudogapping suggests that Icelandic vP ellipsis is possible in principle. Stylistic Fronting suggests that (remnant) vP movement is possible in principle. So we need to derive the absence of these processes as part of the normal course of affairs in Icelandic. The present proposal derives the absence of these things by claiming that the normal course of affairs involves the complete evacuation of the vP. Various constructions show us exceptional, intermediate stages of this derivation. Láta ‘let/make’ can interrupt the derivation before the verb moves to the left of its arguments. Optional PP-DP order follows from the nature of the movements involved. The existence of coordinate object deletion follows from the ability to coordinate vPs prior to vP-evacuation. Stylistic Fronting moves the vP before the verb moves out, and pseudogapping deletes the vP before the verb or its object move out. Embracing the evacuation of the Icelandic vP thus explains the absence of vP ellipsis/topicalization, gives us a way to understand a variety of other constructions, and offers a new set of questions for the study of Stylistic Fronting and pseudogapping.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/004156 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	In Sherry Hucklebridge and Max Nelson [eds.] Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society [Volume III], 245–254.
keywords:	icelandic, stylistic fronting, vps, remnant movement, ov order, vp ellipsis, vp fronting, let-causatives, pseudogapping, object deletion, word order, syntax
Downloaded:	475 times

 

[ edit this article | back to article list ]