Danish in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar - German ...

Object Shi and Negation Shi
d. Men den kommende viceborgmester i Mariager Fjord Kommune har
but the future vice.mayor in Mariager Fjord municipality has
[intet] fortalt sin partiformand, der nu venter på en forklaring
nothing told his party.leader who now waits for an explanation
‘But the future vice mayor in Mariager Fjord municipality has not told his
leader in the party anything and he is now waiting for an explanation’
is differs from object shi where shi over the finite verb is impossible (see Section
... on Holmberg’s Generalization). Engels (: p. ) calls this shiing over
the finite verb the Inverse Holmberg Effect.
e DO can also neg-shi if it independently occurs in a position adjacent to the
negation, because the indirect object has shied to the position before the sentential
adjuncts as in (a) (Christensen : p. ). In this laer case the Neg-shi is stringvacuous:
you cannot tell from the sequence of words whether the IQP is in the position
of the negation or in complement position within the VP. However, since an IQP is
impossible – or extremely marked – in complement position (see example (b)), we have
strong indications that the IQP ingen penge (‘no money’) in example (a) has indeed
undergone neg-shi.
() a. De lånte [hende] i faktisk [ingen penge j ] _ i _ j
they lend her actually no money
‘Actually they didn’t lend her any money.’
b. ?* Jeg låner min bror [ingen penge]
I lend my brother no money
‘I am not lending my brother any money.’
If neither of these two conditions is met, an IQP as a DO cannot undergo neg-Shi as
shown in ().
()
* Jeg låner [ingen penge] [min bror]
I lend no money my brother
‘I am not lending my brother any money.’
A neg-shied complement cannot contain any post-nominal modifiers (Christensen :
p. ). e shied constituent must be syntactically light. Neg-shiing strands postnominal
modifiers in the canonical position of the complement. Interestingly stranding
of post-nominal modifiers is generally not possible outside neg-shiing contexts.
In (a) the object ingen indflydelse (‘no influence’) has shied leaving the PP-modifier
på de beslutninger (‘on those decisions’) within the VP. Example (b) shows that the
PP cannot shi along with the object and example (c) shows, that post-nominal PPs
cannot be stranded outside neg-shi, e. g. if the head-noun is topicalized.
http://www.bt.dk/krimi/viceborgmester-i-slagsmaal-med-doermand, /
Dra of October , , :