Object symmetry effects in Germanic: Evidence for the role of case

Abstract

This paper focuses on passive symmetry effects in Germanic. We describe two large-sample judgment experiments with native speakers of Norwegian and Swedish, two partially symmetric passive languages. The results fail to support predictions of Anagnostopoulou’s (2003) seminal locality approach to passive symmetry in these languages. We propose that constraints on object ordering in these varieties are better modeled on a revised version of classic case-based theories. On this approach, patterns of object ordering are governed by variation in the way that case is assigned to objects. In addition, the Norwegian results suggest a shape conservation effect in object shift contexts not previously reported in the literature. Theme-recipient orders in Norwegian object shift contexts are available for just those speakers who also accept theme-recipient orders in active non-object shift contexts. This object ordering constraint applies in the same environment that another, much better described ordering constraint applies, namely Holmberg’s Generalization effects. We show that these results are explained by Fox and Pesetsky’s (2005) cyclic linearization algorithm together with the assumption that theme-recipient orders vP-internally reflect short theme-movement above the recipient.