Ejemplo

As has been proposed for Old Swedish, an overview of relative clauses and relative complementizer forms in Old Icelandic is given in this subsection. The presented facts are compared in order to see which different evolution of complementation structures possibly led to present-day differences regarding preverbal subjects and SF in Mainland Scandinavian and Icelandic.

Relative clauses in Old Icelandic are typically introduced by the complementizers er or sem. The first one, er, is analogous to the most archaic form ær found in Early Old Swedish. According to Faarlund (2008), sem was originated as a comparative particle meaning “as” (lit. “same”) and became into use as a regular relative complementizer first in Norwegian, then in Icelandic. This later adoption of sem in Icelandic favors the hypothesis that this form is the counterpart of som in Old Swedish, given the influence that the East Old Norse variety had on Old Norwegian (a West Norse variety, cf. Figure 10., p. 186). Both forms are also found in comparative clauses.

Faarlund (2008) gives several example of relative clauses, most of which introduced by er. Although he doesn’t say anything about the frequency of SF in subject relative clauses, it can be easily observed that SF seems pretty much obligatory in this context. All cases of subject relativization reported in Faarlund (2008) display SF of some element, as illustrated in (304) below (all examples are from Faarlund (2008) unless differently specified):

(304) a. í borginni var hǫfðingi sá, [er Óðinn var kallaðr] (Old Icelandic) in castle.the was chieftain that that Odin was called

b. í þau kinungs herbergi [er helzt munu vera góðir siðir í hafðir]

in those king.GEN quarters that most may.3p be good customs in had

“In those king’s quarters where good customs must especially be observed” [Kgs 42.22]

c. út um dyrr þær, [er ganga mátti upp á húsit]

out of doors.ACC those that go could up on house.the

“Out through the door which led upstairs” [Eg 221.12] With non-subject relatives, SF is not so frequent and a preverbal subject, either as a full DP or as a pronoun, is found instead, as illustrated in (305) (subjects are underlined). Notice that also quirky subjects are in complementary distribution with SF, in (305)c. (305) a. at samtegja góða menn ok illa þeirri samtengingu

to join good men.ACC and bad that union.DAT [er illir menn mætti batna af samvistu góðra]

that bad men.NOM might.SUBJ.3p improve from togetherness.DAT good “To join good and bad people in a union by which bad people could improve by

living with good people” [Hóm 79.24]

b. er sú kona illa gift, [er þú átt]

is that woman badly married that you own.2s

“The woman who is your wife made a bad marriage” [Nj 29.3] c. þat [er mér þótti engi vón í vera]

that that me.DAT seemed no hope in be

“That in which I thought there was no hope” [Barl 101.32] It is worth remarking that, regardless the complementizer introducing the relative (or comparative) clause, virtually no case of subject pro-drop without SF in non-subject relatives is attested in the data reported by Faarlund (2008) (50 clauses, either cases of subject or non-subject extractions). The only exception is represented by the quasi- argument drop reported in (306), where the complementizer er is used as a temporal marker. Recall that Old Icelandic doesn’t have an overt form for expletive and quasi- argumental subjects, which explains why a null subject (of a meteorologic verb) is possible in this case, where there is no candidate to SF.

(306) Óláfr konungr fór, [er Ø váraði,] út til sævar Olaf.N king went when became.spring out to sea

“Olaf the king left for the sea when spring came” [Hkr II.145.15] In light of these facts, we can conclude that in Old Icelandic SF is obligatory in subject relative clauses, but not in non-subject relative clauses, where the referential subject is obligatory. This pattern is strikingly reminiscent of the Old Italian one. In Old Italian, referential null subjects are in general excluded from embedded clauses, unless either subordinate V-to-Fin is possible or SF occurs (cf. Chapter 2). Notice that the

subject/non-subject asymmetry regarding the distribution of SF in Old Icelandic relative clauses introduced by er/sem is exactly opposite to the pattern found in the Early Modern Swedish relatives introduced by hvilkin som. Namely, Old Swedish som is in complementary distribution with SF in subject relatives, whereas Old Icelandic er/sem seems to require SF in the same type of relative clauses.

At this point, the relevant question is whether Old Icelandic SF is at all compatible with overt preverbal subjects in non-subject relatives, or rather in complementary distribution with them.

Interestingly, Faarlund (2008) observes that relativization of the subject could be done by means of a resumptive pronoun strategy, usually:

“when a 1st _{or 2}nd _{person pronoun is the antecedent of a relativized subject}

[…]but it may be also found in other contexts”. (p. 263)

Consider the extraposed relative in (307) below, where the resumptive pronoun is underlined and the base site of the extraposed clause is marked with an underscore: (307) þótti sá einn [ __ ] með fullu mega heita sækonungr,

seemed that one with full may be.called sea.king [er hann svaf aldregi undir sótkum ási]

that he slept never under sooty beam

“It seemed that only one who never slept under a sooty beam could be called a real

sea king” [Hkr I. 57.16]

Crucially, SF (in bold, in (308)) can coccur with postverbal resumptive subject pronouns, which clearly indicates that the target position of the latter is higher than the IP subject position of the resumptive pronoun, namely, SF targets the CP.

(308) ek em brauð [er niðr sté ek af himni]

I am bread that down stepped.1s I from heaven.DAT

“I am the living bread who descended from heaven” [Hóm 39.10] This resumptive pronoun strategy is neither available for Old nor for Modern Italian subject-relative clauses128_{. Nonetheless, the cooccurrence of a subject with SF is not}

problematic for the present analysis. Following Fischer and Alexiadou’s (2001) observations, it has been proposed that SF originated as a pragmatically marked phenomenon contributing to the information structure. Indeed, the interpretation of (308) reveals a certain discourse prominence of niðr. It is worth observing that the resumptive strategy in relative clauses is no longer productive in Icelandic. In the present perspective, then, the reanalysis of the SF function from a pragmatically marked phenomenon to a syntactic device to allow subject extraction is in accordance with the loss of the resumptive strategy in subject relatives. Other cases of cooccurrence of subjects with stylistically fronted items were observed for old varieties of Romance (cf. Chapter 2): the different orders attested so far in such varieties and Scandinavian are the following ones:

128 _{However resumptive pronouns are sometimes found in non subject relatives in Old Italian and some}

(309) a. Subj – SF – V (Old Romance, NA in Old Icelandic) b. SF? – V- Subj (Old Icelandic, NA in Old Romance)

c.NA_{SF – Subj –V}

Provided that cases in (309)b. are really cases of SF and not topicalizations, the interesting fact is that neither language of those indicated in (309) ever displays the order SF – Subj –V, which speaks in favor of a locality requirement between the stylistically fronted item and the verb, supporting the present analysis. Recall that Hrafnbjargarson (2004) claims that the order in (309)a. is grammatical in Modern Icelandic as well, but such possibility is attested only with fronted adverbs, which is why I do not consider it proper SF, in line with Falk’s (1993) view.

Let us assume that SF underwent a reanalyses from a “stylistic” phenomenon to a strategy of subject extraction. The question is why this happened in Icelandic but not in the Mainland Scandinavian languages. Further investigations on the complementation system of relative clauses are needed at this point, since the CP properties are revealing about the loss of SF in Swedish, as shown in the previous section. By analogy with the Old Swedish facts discussed above, complementizer forms adopted at a later stage in the evolution of Old Icelandic were searched in the data presented in Faarlund (2008). Specifically, it was observed whether, in addition to er and sem, Wh- complementizers analogous to the Old Swedish hvilkin (cf. Section 4.6.) were also attested. Recall that Old Swedish hvilkin appears either alone or followed by som, and the latter combination is preferred in subject relatives.

With regard to Faarlund’s (2008) data, no such construction is attested in Old Icelandic, where

“In some rare instances an interrogative word may precede the complementizer. This clearly also has a foreign pattern” (emphasis mine, p. 265)

An example of Wh- word+relative complementizer is given in (310) below:

(310) tvau bref virðuligs herra Hákonar konungs […] [í hverjum er konungrin býðr…] two letters worthy lord Hakon.GEN king in which.pl.DAT that king.the orders “Two letters from His Highness King Hakon, in which he orders…” [DN I.122]

Notice that the complementizer following the Wh- word in (310) is er, not sem. Moreover the clause that í hverjum er introduces is a non-subject relative, thus there is no reason to believe that there is any connection between the compound complementizer form in (310) and the hvilkin som complex introducing Early Modern Swedish subject relatives. The only case where

“a relative clause with sem may have an interrogative word or phrase in the topic position” (Faarlund (2008), p. 269), is with “unspecified relative clauses, with the meaning ‘whatever, whether (or not)’” (ibid.).

An example of non-subject free relative is given below (no subject relatives of this kind are given in Faarlund (2008)):

(311) vil ek þat festa yðr, at koma aldri í Orkneyjar,

want.1s I that promise you.DAT to come never in Orkneys [hvat sem konungr mælir um þat]

what that king says about it

“I will promise you never to go to the Orkneys, whatever the king says about it” [Hkr II.212.3] The structure of free relatives is clearly very different from that of Old Swedish subject relatives introduced by hvilkin som.129 _{The fact that sem is found with a Wh- word only}

in free relatives indicated that this relative complementizer is located very high in the clause and it can be preceded only by a Wh- OP which needs to scope over the entire clause.

The hypothesis is that sem in Old Icelandic and, consequently, in Icelandic has a unique, high position in the CP domain, differently from som in Old Swedish which can lexicalize either a high or a lower head in the CP. Specifically, it has been claimed that som occurs in Fin, a lower position below the projection targeted by the WhP, in the hvilkin som construction. Before presenting further investigations which were carried out in order to prove the validity of this hypothesis (see Section 4.9.), the facts so far illustrated are presented in a comparative table below.

Table 16. Relative complementizers in Old Swedish and Old Icelandic

120 0 1300 1400 1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 SWEDISH OV --- OV/VO---VO--- Ø --- som --- ær --- - - - - ther - - - - - - - - --- - - - - - - - hvilkin (som) --- ICELANDIC OV/VO---VO--- sem --- er --- - - - -

Notice that Icelandic is very conservative: both sem and er are present during the whole historical period considered above. Specifically, the form er, whose equivalent one (ær) disappears from Swedish before the fifteenth century, is still attested in 1700 Icelandic, as the following piece of evidence from Hróarsdóttir (1996) seems to indicate:

(312) er aungvum auðnaðist upp að koma (18th_{century Icelandic)}

that noone succeeded up to come

“that noone succeeded in coming up” [Próf, Hróarsdóttir (1996) 7, 12] An interesting correlation between Old Swedish ær / Icelandic er and basic word order arises from Table 16. According to Sigurðsson (1988), Icelandic has coexisting OV and VO orders until the nineteenth century. Rögnvaldsson (1994) interprets the same

129 _{Extraction strategies in subject free-relative constructions are currently being investigated in}

evidence attesting both OV and VO pattern of pre-1900 Icelandic as a result of the fact that the head-initial/head-final parameter is not set. He claims that:

“Free word order and many instances of empty categories make it seem a reasonable assumption that children would have had difficulties in fixing the value of the head parameter. When the frequency of Stylistic Fronting dropped, the expletive subject það was introduced, and pro-drop became ungrammatical, more and more sentences came to have surface VO-order. Around 1800, the VO-order had become so dominant that children could begin to set the head parameter to ‘initial’ and as a result, OV-sentences disappeared from the language in a relatively short time in the first half of the nineteenth century.” (p. 29)

Whatever the perspective on the setting of the head directionality parameter is, some important remarks regarding the facts in Table 18. can be made:

1. Interestingly, the complementizer ær in Old Swedish disappears when the OV order is no longer consistent and evidence for VO is introduced. The analogous Icelandic form er persists much longer, at least until the language becomes consistently VO, which seems to indicate that this complementizer is somehow related to the setting of the head directionality parameter.

2. According to Rögnvaldsson (1994) and Hróarsdóttir (1996) there is a correlation between loss of OV order and the decrease of SF. Rögnvaldsson reports that SF is much less used today than it used to be in the past century, although still productive. A decrease of SF in favor of það regards specifically the spoken language (Höskuldur Thráinsson, p.c.), whereas SF still represents the prescriptively correct option for the written language. These observations provide good support to the remnant XP analysis of SF illustrated in Chapter 3, according to which SF is more easily derived from a structure based on OV, rather than VO order.