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This thesis focuses on the distribution of objects in the history of Swedish. The primary focus of the thesis is the distribution of objects relative to negation, and the secondary focus is varying order of nominal arguments in Old Swedish (1225–1526).In Modern Swedish, objects may precede the negation, often referred to as Object Shift, OS, or precede a subject, often referred to as Long Object Shift, LOS, but both OS and LOS is restricted to finite main clauses and apply only if the object is an unstressed pronoun. In related languages, like Modern German, objects tend to precede sentential adverbs, and objects may precede the subject.This is often referred to as German Scrambling, which is not restricted to finite main clauses and applies to pronominal as well as full noun phrase objects.This thesis examines if Old Swedish has the same type of OS as Modern Swedish does, and it examines what generates a construction in Old Swedish that shows similarity to LOS in Modern Swedish by testing and assessing three hypotheses.The main findings are these: 1) Old Swedish does have the same type of OS as Modern Swedish in finite main clauses. OS seems to be absent in Old Swedish before 1350, but it is argued that a negation word that undergoes sound change restricts the distribution of objects before 1350; 2) Old Swedish has German Scrambling in non-finite main clauses, and it is argued that the construction in Old Swedish that show similarity to LOS in Modern Swedish is a type of German Scrambling in Old Swedish. |
