Optional ha in Swedish and Norwegian

Abstract In Norwegian and Swedish, the auxiliary ha 'have' can sometimes be omitted. Earlier analyses have treated this as a unitary phenomenon. However, while ha can only be left out after modal verbs in Norwegian, ha-omission has a wider distribution in Swedish. This indicates that the optionality of ha depends on more than one factor. In constructions with modal verbs, the head that is spelled out as ha can be present or absent in both languages. That is, the optionality of ha is connected to the optionality of generating the relevant head. In Swedish, there is the additional possibility of... Mehr ...