Object inversion in Icelandic and the Risamálheild Corpus

Abstract

This paper discusses Object Inversion in Icelandic syntax, i.e. examples where the direct object precedes the indirect object (DO-IO orders) in active clauses. In contrast to the neutral IO-DO order, Object Inversion is incredibly rare with most ditransitive verbs and more or less restricted to ditransitive verbs in the DAT-ACC class. This is shown by extensive searches in the new Risamálheild Corpus. These searches also show that Object Inversion strongly favors examples where the DO encodes old information and is phonologically lighter than the following IO. These results yield new and important insights into the study of Object Inversion but also confirm earlier claims in the literature.