Full NP Object Shift: The Old Norse Puzzle and the Faroese Puzzle revisited

Abstract

This paper argues that there is no reason to believe that full NP Object Shift (NPOS) was not found in Old Norse (Old Icelandic) nor that it is more common in Modern Icelandic than in earlier stages of the language. In addition, it is claimed that NPOS is also an option in Modern Faroese, contrary to common belief, although it is much more restricted in Faroese than in Icelandic. These results demonstrate the usefulness of systematic corpus studies while at the same time reminding us of their limits. In addition, they shed a new light on the status of Faroese among the Scandinavian languages and on the nature of intra-speaker variation and grammar competition.