Workshop on Inversion and Verb Movement

Microparameters for Norwegian wh-grammars

Øystein Alexander Vangsnes
University of Tromsø, CASTL/NORMS

The absence of subject/verb inversion in main clause wh-questions is geographically speaking a very widespread phenomenon in Norwegian, absent only in central eastern and southeastern Norwegian dialects. From a crosslinguistic point of view this phenomenon is quite interesting given that partial Verb Second elsewhere (e.g. English, Romance) tend to be the other way around: V2 is found in wh-questions but not in other constructions. The characteristics of the non-V2 phenomenon in Norwegian are nevertheless not uniform across the dialects—three descriptive variables can be discerned: (i) whether or not V2 is required, (ii) whether or not V2 is optional alongside non-V2, and (iii) whether or not non- V2 is allowed with short wh-elements only. In addition these variables are relative to a ±subjecthood distinction on the wh-constituent. In my talk I will argue that the dialectal variation described in the literature can be dealt with by postulating the following three microparameters: (i) whether or not interrogative C must be lexicalized, (ii) whether or not short wh-elements are heads that may lexicalize C, and (iii) whether or not the element som that appears in subject wh-questions is a head or not.

(A written version of the paper can be downloaded here)