TY - JOUR
T1 - When covert modality sneaks into your grammar
T2 - wh-infinitives in American Norwegian
AU - Putnam, Michael
AU - Søfteland, Åshild
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022.
PY - 2024/1
Y1 - 2024/1
N2 - American Norwegian (AmNo), a moribund heritage variety of Norwegian spoken predominantly in the Upper Midwest of the US, licenses wh-infinitives (i.e. indirect questions), which are structures that are not acceptable in either standard Norwegian Bokmål or Norwegian dialects. Adopting a spanning-account of syntax (Blix, 2021; Julien, 2021; Svenonius, 2016), we propose that wh-elements in AmNo can encode covert modality (similar to what is found in English indirect questions). We discuss these results and their impact on our understanding of the nature of syntactic change and the interaction of spanning in combination with Aʹ-movement in heritage language syntax.
AB - American Norwegian (AmNo), a moribund heritage variety of Norwegian spoken predominantly in the Upper Midwest of the US, licenses wh-infinitives (i.e. indirect questions), which are structures that are not acceptable in either standard Norwegian Bokmål or Norwegian dialects. Adopting a spanning-account of syntax (Blix, 2021; Julien, 2021; Svenonius, 2016), we propose that wh-elements in AmNo can encode covert modality (similar to what is found in English indirect questions). We discuss these results and their impact on our understanding of the nature of syntactic change and the interaction of spanning in combination with Aʹ-movement in heritage language syntax.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85134338262&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85134338262&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/02676583221103741
DO - 10.1177/02676583221103741
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85134338262
SN - 0267-6583
VL - 40
SP - 171
EP - 194
JO - Second Language Research
JF - Second Language Research
IS - 1
ER -