Possessor Extraction in English and Danish

Abstract

Both English and Danish are Germanic languages which are said to require pied-piping of possessive phrases when they are moved, for example in questions like Whose computer do you think this is? If pied-piping is not required in such movements, an alternative way of asking the same question could be Who do you think’s computer this is? (or perhaps, for Danish readers, Hvem er dets computer? [Who is it’s computer?] might be acceptable), where the possessor who/hvem has been extracted from the possessive phrase whose computer/hvis computer, leaving the rest of the possessive DP material -’s/-s computer behind. This type of movement is called possessor extraction (PE), and Davis (2021) provides evidence for the possibility of it in colloquial English for some speakers. This article is a pilot study of Danish PE, suggesting initial generalizations and comparing these to Davis’s (2021) generalizations about English PE.