Abstract
This paper uses large-scale data extracted from a series of Swedish corpora to investigate the factors responsible for conditioning the choice of (optional) embedded V2 in Swedish. Embedded V2 has been argued to represent a more general kind of syntactic optionality found across languages: syntactic structures typically found in matrix clauses, but which are also available in certain types of embedded environments (so called Main Clause Phenomena). While the received view, going back to Hooper & Thompson (1973), is that the availability of main clause syntax has a semantic-pragmatic correlate in the presence of Illocutionary Force, pinpointing exactly what this amounts to has remained an open problem. Through statistical analysis of the Swedish corpus data, combined with results from a semantic-inference task, we are able to falsify certain previous (theoretical and empirical) claims about the distribution and interpretation of embedded V2. We additionally evaluate, and find no evidence to support, a processing or usage-based view of optionality in embedded V2. We argue instead that the interpretive notion driving the distribution of embedded V2 is discourse novelty; whether the embedded proposition is treated as discourse-old or new information. We argue that embedded V2 is licensed in contexts where p is discourse novel. While this is fundamentally a pragmatic notion, it is nevertheless tightly constrained by both lexical-semantic properties of the matrix predicate and other aspects of the grammatical context. An important methodological consequence of this work is that by looking at particular interactions of lexical and grammatical contexts, statistical analysis of usage data can be used to test specific predictions made by syntactic and semantic theory.
Highlights
We investigate a type of syntactic optionality found across languages: syntactic structures typically found in matrix clauses, but which are available— apparently not obligatory—in certain types of embedded environments
We argue that embedded V2 [EV2] is only licensed in contexts where the embedded proposition p is introduced into the conversation as entirely new information
In this paper we argue, based on statistical data extracted from a series of large-scale written Swedish corpora, that the semantic-pragmatic notion driving the distribution of EV2 is discourse novelty; whether the embedded proposition is treated as discourseold or new information
Summary
1.1 IntroductionIn this paper, we investigate a type of syntactic optionality found across languages: syntactic structures typically found in matrix clauses, but which are available— apparently not obligatory—in certain types of embedded environments. Since Hooper & Thompson (1973), building on seminal work by Emonds (1970), the received view is that such Main Clause Phenomena [MCP] are licensed by the kinds of interpretive properties typically associated with matrix clauses. This paper presents new quantitative data addressing this question in the context of embedded V-to-C movement, or Verb Second — a type of MCP found across a variety of languages, including Mainland Scandinavian and several other Germanic languages. From this data, we argue that embedded V2 [EV2] is only licensed in contexts where the embedded proposition p is introduced into the conversation as entirely new information. This is to say that EV2 is unavailable in contexts where p has been previously discussed by the speaker and the hearer, regardless of whether or not p is mutually agreed on
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