Chapter 3
Word order and verb movement in Norwegian wh-questions
A comparison of production and judgment data
This paper compares production and judgment data collected from several North Norwegian dialects, focusing on word order variation in wh-questions (V2 vs. non-V2). The findings show that non-V2 is widespread in questions with monosyllabic wh-elements and also fully accepted in questions with phrasal wh-elements in language contact areas. Furthermore, the acceptability of non-V2 correlates with the complexity of the wh-element, confirming previous accounts of the historical development. Age differences suggest that this development is currently being reversed. However, there is a major discrepancy between the production and judgement data, in that non-V2 is hardly ever produced with complex wh-elements. The findings are discussed in relation to what frequencies in diachronic data can(not) reveal about the grammar that produced historical texts.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background
- 3.
Word order in wh-questions in Northern Troms
- 4.Research questions
- 5.Participants and methodology
- 6.Results
- 6.1Acceptability judgments
- 6.2Comparison with similar data from Southern Troms
- 6.3
The effect of information structure
- 6.4Semi-spontaneous production
- 6.5Age differences
- 7.
Discussion
- 8.Summary and conclusion
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Acknowledgements
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Notes
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References