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Against the Small Clause Hypothesis: Evidence from Swedish relative clause extractions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2015

Christiane Müller
Christiane Müller*
Affiliation:
Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, Box 201, SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden. christiane.muller@nordlund.lu.se
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Abstract

On the basis of data from Swedish, this paper examines the Small Clause Hypothesis (Kush & Lindahl 2011, Kush, Omaki & Hornstein 2013) proposed to account for relative clause (RC) extractions in Mainland Scandinavian. The hypothesis predicts that extraction possibilities differ for relative clauses in the complement of verbs which select and verbs which do not select a small clause (SC), and that the possibility of RC extraction hinges on the ability of the matrix verb to select SCs involving the predicational operator som. I report results from an acceptability judgment experiment on RC extraction in Swedish manipulating three conditions: (a) SC-selecting verbs compatible with som, (b) SC-selecting verbs incompatible with som, and (c) verbs that are incompatible with SCs. The results show no significant difference between these conditions, thus offer no support in favor of the Small Clause Hypothesis. Additional problems are posed by the possibility of extraction from object RCs and by extraction possibilities in the absence of som.

Keywords

acceptability judgmentsextractionisland constraintslocalityrelative clausessmall clausesSwedishsyntax
Type
Research Article
Information
Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , May 2015 , pp. 67 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © Nordic Association of Linguistics 2015 

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