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Syntactic Variation in Insular Scandinavian
Edited by Höskuldur Thráinsson, Caroline Heycock, Hjalmar P. Petersen and Zakaris Svabo Hansen
[Studies in Germanic Linguistics 1] 2017
► pp. 199–232

Inverse attraction in Icelandic relative clauses

| Yale University
| University of Pennsylvania
| University of Iceland
We introduce “inverse attraction” (IA) (Bianchi 1999: 93) in non-standard Icelandic, a nearly unstudied phenomenon that provides special insight into relative clause formation, specificially regarding the copy deletion that occurs in the “matching analysis” derivation of relatives. Descriptively, IA seems to involve deletion of the higher, rather than the lower copy of the relative head. In order to study this phenomenon in more detail, we conducted a judgment study with 130 Icelandic-speaking participants. The results of our study indicate that the acceptability of IA depends on the matrix and embedded cases involved, on the position of the gap inside the relative clause, and on the position of the whole relativized DP.
Keywords: inverse attraction, matching analysis, relative clauses, judgment data, case, Icelandic
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Overview and background
    • 2.1Case attraction and Inverse Attraction
    • 2.2Attested examples
    • 2.3Variation
  • 3.Sketching an analysis
  • 4.Survey design
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Primary results
    • 5.2Further results
  • 6.Interpreting the results
  • 7.Conclusion and future directions
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 18 July 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sigl.1.08woo
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Czypionka, Anna, Laura Dörre & Josef Bayer
2018. Inverse Case attraction: experimental evidence for a syntactically guided process. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 21:2 ► pp. 135 ff. DOI logo

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