Re: NAT: Scandinavian word order

At 21:19 +0100 7.1.2000, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
>
>> >Danish is still firmly V2 (except in yes-no questions, which are
>> >verb-initial). Something has to go in front of V, and that something
>> >is very often the subject, so the unmarked order is actually SVO ---
>> >but if something like an adverb is fronted, you get VSO. AFAIK, it's
>> >similar but not quite the same in Swedish and Norwegian.
>>
>> Nothing significantly different in Swedish (or Norwegian, or Icelandic)
>> that I can think of.
>
>Long live Nordic unity! (I know, I know, the Finns get left out).
I remember a TV program where Jon Skolmen was reading a speech, repeating
each sentence in Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Finnish.  Nobody thought it
was funny untill he came to "celebrating our common culture and our common
language!" :-)

>There are some differences in word order between Danish and Swedish,
>I'm sure, but I can't remember which just now. It involves adverbs,
>probably. Adverbs and pronominal objects play all sorts of games.
Yeah, there sure are, though I can't think of any.  I was thinking
specifically of the V2 business.

Early Medieval Scandinavian was sometimes V1 in consecutive sentences,
especially in legal texts -- "Drepr maðr mann blah blah blah" --, but that
seems to have died out even in Icelandic.  Probably it arose from sentences
beginning with a temporal adverb.



/BP

 B.Philip Jonsson  <mailto: bpj@...> <mailto: melroch@...>
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