Raising to object in Norwegian and the derived object constraint*

Abstract

Abstract. Norwegian is traditionally assumed not to have raising to object from infinitival complements with believe type verbs. This article shows that it does, based upon sentences from written texts. It is also shown that this construction is – with some exceptions – subject to the constraint that the raised object cannot be in the regular object position. This constraint was discussed for a group of English verbs in Postal (1974), who called it the Derived Object Constraint. The standard view in the literature is that it is related to case theory. This article proposes a new explanation. With believe type verbs, a raised object is also the subject of an infinitival complement with an individual level predicate. Being the subject of an individual level predicate, the raised object must have a strong reading, which makes it high in topicality. This is the property that can (but does not have to) be grammaticalized as the Derived Object Constraint. The implementation of this constraint in Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) is discussed, and it is shown how it can be stated as a constraint on functional structure.