Verb movement and negation in Övdalian

This article deals with verb movement and negation in Ovdalian, an independent East Scandinavian language known in Swedish linguistics as alvdalska or alvdalsmal. I show that V°-to-I° movement doesn’t seem to be obligatory in (at least some varietes of) Ovdalian despite the rich verb morphology, which is contrary to the prediction of the Rich Agreement Hypothesis. I also try to present the base structure of the Ovdalian clause, arguing that there are two NegP positions in it, a high one and a low one, as well as an initial and a final negation position, and that the form of the negation depends on its placement in the clause. Probably because of the high NegP the effects of possible verb movement cannot be traced in control infinitivals. In addition to the position of the negation, I discus the presence of negative concord in Ovdalian, and the possible rules for it. Finally, a short comparison of Ovdalian with the other Scandinavian languages is made.