Raising to object in Norwegian and the Derived Object Constraint ...

Raising to object in Norwegian and the Derived Object Constraint Helge Lødrup University of Oslo The topic of this paper is raising to object in Norwegian with verbs like anse 'consider', anta 'assume', erklære 'state', etc. These verbs will be called reflective verbs, and the construction will be called reflective raising. I only consider raising from infinitival complements (with the infinitival marker not preceded by prepositions or other grammatical words), as in (1)-(2). (1) Selskapets ledelse anser dette [å være en god investering] the-company's leadership considers this to be a good investment The company's leadership considers this to be a good investment (2) Dette antar Velikovsky [å være store mengder olje] this assumes Velikovsky to be great quantities oil Velikovsky assumes this to be great quantities of oil The status of reflective raising in Scandinavian grammar is curious. It is a standard topic in Swedish grammar, while grammars of Danish and Norwegian either do not mention it, or say that it is non-existing or archaic. A closer look at the data seems to indicate that the three languages might be more similar in this respect. On the basis of authentic text data, it will be shown that the construction is productive in Norwegian with a reasonable number of verbs. Even so, it is clear that reflective raising is not colloquial, and that native speakers use and accept this construction to varying degrees (as Teleman et al. 1999:576 remark on the basis of Swedish). One might suggest that reflective raising sentences in Norwegian only represent accidental borrowings from English. One argument against this position is that English and Norwegian reflective raising do not have identical grammatical properties. One difference concerns the Derived Object Constraint (DOC). Postal (1974) pointed out that a group of English verbs (like allege) only allow reflective raising when the raised object is not in the regular object position, which means that it must be in a topic or focus position. (3) *He alleged Melvin to be a pimp (Postal 1974:304) (4) Melvin, he alleged to be a pimp (Postal 1974:304) This constraint - the DOC - has been shown to be more general in other languages; for example, it is a general requirement for reflective raising in French (Kayne 1981). Investigating the DOC raises many difficult questions concerning methodology, description and theory. Considering authentic sentences and speakers' intuitions, it is clear that most reflective raising verbs in Norwegian are subject to the DOC. Even so, there are (as in English and French) acceptable sentences in which the DOC cannot be satisfied, because the raised object is an element that can never be in a topic or focus position, like the simple reflexive (cf. 5). (5) Ingen kan i dag si seg [å være i besittelse av "medisinen"] nobody can today say themselves to be in possession of the-drug Nobody can say that they have the drug today Norwegian also has a couple of reflective verbs that are exceptional in generally allowing DOC violations (at least anse 'consider', cf. (1) above, and finne 'find'). These verbs are among those that are found most often with reflective raising in texts. DOC violations are always unacceptable with verbs that are more peripheral with reflective raising. This fact suggests that the DOC should be considered a grammatical constraint on the reflective raising construction in Norwegian, and that the exceptional verbs are idiosyncratic exceptions. From a more general point of view, the DOC is a restriction whose nature is not understood. There is variation between speakers, between verbs, and between languages. The DOC can be grammaticalized (as in French and Norwegian) or lexicalized (as in English). The interesting question is then what it is that is grammaticalized or lexicalized. The standard view in the literature from Kayne (1981) is that the DOC is related to abstract case (Rizzi 1990:60, Pesetsky 1991, Rooryck 1997, Boskovic 1997, Richards 2001, Miller 2002 see criticism in Postal 1993). The problem with this view is that it does not say what the DOC really is. Why should there be anything like the DOC in natural languages? Why isn't the

restriction the other way around, saying that a raised object must be in the regular object position? Why doesn't it affect raising to object with perception verbs or causative verbs? The approach taken here (inspired by Rooryck 1997, Basilico 2003) takes the semantics of the subordinate predicate as the point of departure. Reflective raising verbs often express a subjective evaluation, and their subordinate predicate is usually stative (Wierzbicka 1988, Barron 1999, Miller 2002), typically consisting of a copula and a predicate complement. This predicate complement typically denotes properties that are permanent, which means that it is an individual level predicate (Raposo and Uriagereka 1995). The subject of an individual level predicate has a strong reading (Ladusaw 1994); it refers to something whose existence is presupposed, and it is highly topical. The important point is that the raised object has a strong reading because it is the subject of an individual level predicate. This fact has consequences for the way it is integrated into the main clause. Even if the raised object is not a thematic argument of the main clause, it is a syntactic argument there, and it has to be positioned as one. A classical insight in functional typology and Optimality Theory is that subjects and objects prototypically differ with respect to universal prominence scales expressing dimensions like agentivity, topicality, definiteness, animacy, etc. The unmarked situation is that subjects are high on these scales, while objects are low (Aissen 1999, 2003). Raised objects with reflective verbs are non-prototypical objects. Their strong reading makes it natural for them to be in the topic position, rather than in the regular object position. This is the conceptual basis of what can (but does not have to) be grammaticalized or lexicalized as the DOC. This approach to the DOC interprets it as a restriction on argument distribution according to information structural status, comparable to for example object shift and presentational focus. Norwegian and French are both languages in which information structure plays an important role in the syntactic structuring of sentences (as compared to for example English). It is therefore natural for Norwegian and French to have a general DOC. This approach to the DOC predicts correctly that there is no DOC with other cases of raising to object, as with perception verbs or causative verbs; the reason being that these verbs have different requirements for their subordinate predicates. Established as a grammatical or lexical restriction, the DOC works in a 'mechanical' way. For example, a raised wh object in a question (cf. 6) is not a topic. These wh objects have to be realized in SpecCP for independent reasons, however, and the sentences in question will 'automatically' satisfy the DOC. (6) Undervisningen […] signaliserer hva vi anser [å være mest sentralt i pensum] the-teaching signalizes what we consider to be most important in syllabus The teaching signalizes what we consider to be most important in the syllabus The architecture of LFG makes available a simple and intuitive way of implementing the DOC. Topic and focus are both discourse functions. King og Zaenen (2004) suggest that discourse functions might be selected by predicates, and the DOC gives an interesting argument for this view. With verbs that obey the DOC, a part of the lexical information for reflective raising must be a specification that the non-thematic argument is realized as a discourse function. This is all that needs to be said. In the LFG classification of syntactic functions, the subject is both an argument function and a discourse function. The restriction that the non-thematic argument of a reflective verb is realized as a discourse function therefore says that it can be realized as a subject. This is correct; Norwegian verbs that are subject to the DOC have good passives, and realizing their non-thematic argument as a subject in the passive can be seen as a way of satisfying the DOC. The problem with the approach to the DOC proposed here is that it does not explain why the DOC only concerns raising from infinitival complements. There is no DOC effect with raising from complements of other categories (cf. 7-8). This fact will be related to the fact that raising to object is typologically more marked with infinitival complements than with other complements. (7) Legen erklærte ham frisk the-doctor declared him healthy The doctor declared him healthy (8) Vi antar temperaturen til å være 10 º C we assume the-temperature to (PREP) to (INF.M.) be 10 º C We assume the temperature to be 10 º C