The form and position of pronominal objects with non-nominal antecedents in Scandinavian and German

Abstract The present paper discusses a possible correlation between the placement of pronominal objects with non-nominal antecedents in Norwegian, and the use of the pronouns es ‘it’ and das ‘that’ in German. For Norwegian object shift (OS), it has been shown that while pronominal objects with non-nominal antecedents generally do not shift, this is not the case when these elements take on the discourse function of continuing topics. In this paper, we show that a very similar pattern can be observed in German. However, this is not related to whether object pronouns scramble or not, but rather t... Mehr ...