Remarks on Holmberg's generalization

It is argued that the dependence of Scandinavian Object Shift on verb movement, called Holmberg’s Generalization, is a special case of a more general condition preventing Object Shift across any phologically visible category within VP: a verb, a preposition, a verb particle or another argument. Overt movement of the blocking category will always pave the way for Object Shift. The interplay between Object Shift and Verb Topicalization (verb movement to specCP) shows (a) that it makes no difference to Object Shift how the verb moves, as long as it moves, (b) that Holmberg’s Generalization is a matter of derivation, not representation, and (c) that Object Shift does not observe the strict cycle. It is proposed that Object Shift applies after insertion of pholological features in a component of stylistic rules, containing rules dependent on focus structure.

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