Verb particles in Older Icelandic

Abstract

Older Icelandic had various word order patterns with verb particles, including both pre- and postverbal particles. The most frequent patterns in the attested corpus show a preverbal particle and a postverbal direct object, or a preverbal particle and a preverbal direct object. In the earliest texts, dating from the fourteenth century, preverbal particles are preferred over postverbal particles, although both pre- and postverbal particles co-exist in the corpus for several centuries. In this paper, we will shown how a small clause analysis of verb particles, together with a remnant VP movement framework (Hróarsdóttir 2000) can account for the attested orders of verb particles in the history of Icelandic.