Publications

The distribution of main and embedded structures: V2 and non-V2 orders in North Germanic

Maud Westendorp. 2022. “The distribution of main and embedded structures: V2 and non-V2 orders in North Germanic.” Doctoral dissertation UiT The Arctic University of Tromsø.

This dissertation contains four articles and a introductory and summarising chapter. I successfully defended it on March 30, 2022.

Variable verb second in Norwegian main and embedded clauses

Maud Westendorp. 2021. “Variable verb second in Norwegian main and embedded clauses.” Nordic Atlas of Language Structures (NALS) Journal 6(1): 1–48.

This article presents the results of a set of elicited production experiments that test verb placement in main and embedded clauses in Norwegian. The distribution of deviations from the standard V2-pattern, and the constraints on the environments where these are produced are discussed.

Verb placement variation in Swedish and Danish

Maud Westendorp. 2021. “Verb placement variation in Swedish and Danish.” Nordic Atlas of Language Structures (NALS) Journal 6(1): 49-72.

This article gives a summary of the Swedish and Danish data on verb placement in the Nordic Word order Database (NWD; Lundquist et al. 2019). The Swedish and Danish results are discussed in direct comparison to the verb placement patterns observed in the other North Germanic languages covered in the NWD.

Tverrspråklig innflytelse fra L1 i tilegnelsen av argumentplassering i L2 norsk og svensk

Westendorp, Maud & Björn Lundquist. 2021. “Tverrspråklig innflytelse fra L1 i tilegnelsen av argumentplassering i L2 norsk og svensk.” (“Cross-linguistic influence from L1 in the acquisition of argument placement in L2 Norwegian and Swedish.”) Norsk Lingvistisk Tidsskrift (NLT) 39: 13–40.

This article presents the results of three experiments (judgements and production) that test subject and direct object placement in second language learners of Norwegian and Swedish. We find that placement of NP-subjects in Norwegian and Swedish is especially difficult for L2 speakers. Our results further show that L1 plays a major role in the patterns we find in the L2: L2 learners expect argument placement to be governed by the same factors in their second, as in their first language.

Verb placement in embedded sentences in Faroese

Westendorp, Maud. 2020. “Verb placement in embedded sentences in Faroese.” Nordic Atlas of Language Structures (NALS) Journal 5(1): 28–42. https://doi.org/10.5617/nals.8525

I present data from the Nordic Word order Database (NWD) on word order in Faroese embedded clauses. I discuss the methods used in the data elicitation, data analysis, and present a first overview of the patterns in the dataset.

Code-switching alone cannot explain intraspeaker syntactic variability: Evidence from a spoken elicitation experiment

Lundquist, Björn, Maud Westendorp, & Bror-Magnus S. Strand. 2020. “Code-switching alone cannot explain intraspeaker syntactic variability: Evidence from a spoken elicitation experiment.” Nordic Journal of Linguistics, 43(3), 249-287. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0332586520000190

In this paper we investigate the role of register/dialect mixing in accounting for syntactic variation within speakers.

Nordic Word order Database: motivations, methods, material and infrastructure

Lundquist, Björn, Ida Larsson, Maud Westendorp, Eirik Tengesdal & Anders Nøklestad. 2019. “Nordic Word order Database: motivations, methods, material and infrastructure.” Nordic Atlas of Language Structures (NALS) Journal 4(1): 1–33. https://doi.org/10.5617/nals.7529

In this article, we present the Nordic Word order Database (NWD), with a focus on the rationale behind it, the methods used in data elicitation, data analysis and the empirical scope of the database.

Maud Westendorp