Structured exceptions and case selection in Insular Scandinavian

The diachronic development of case selection in Insular Scandinavian (Icelandic and Faroese) provides strong support for a dichotomy of structured exceptions, which display partial productivity, and arbitrary exceptions, which are totally unproductive. Focusing on two kinds of exceptional case, we argue that verbs taking accusative experiencer subjects form a similarity cluster on the basis of shared lexical semantic properties, thus enabling new lexical items to be attracted to the cluster. By contrast, verbs taking genitive objects have no common semantic properties that could be the source of partial productivity.