Word order under lade ‘ let ’ and høre ‘ hear ’

The Nordic languages differ with respect to word order in infinitives under causative lade ‘let’ (and cognates), in cases where the agent of the embedded verb is unspecified (see e.g. Taraldsen 1984, Platzack 1986a, Thráinsson 2007:454 and Wood 2011). In Icelandic and Standard Swedish, an object DP must follow the embedded verb, while in Danish it must precede the verb; cf. (1) and (2). Faroese and Norwegian allow both orders (see Thráinsson et al. 2004:313 n. and Faarlund et al. 1997:1009). According to Hulthén (1944:127), VO is the normal order in Bokmål, and Faarlund et al. (1997:1009) states that the OV-order is used in literary style.


Introduction
The Nordic languages differ with respect to word order in infinitives under causative lade 'let' (and cognates), in cases where the agent of the embedded verb is unspecified (see e.g.Taraldsen 1984, Platzack 1986a, Thráinsson 2007:454 and Wood 2011).In Icelandic and Standard Swedish, an object DP must follow the embedded verb, while in Danish it must precede the verb; cf. ( 1) and (2).Faroese and Norwegian allow both orders (see Thráinsson et al. 2004:313 n. and Faarlund et al. 1997:1009).According to Hulthén (1944:127), VO is the normal order in Bokmål, and Faarlund et al. (1997Faarlund et al. ( :1009) ) states that the OV-order is used in literary style.

Nordic Syntax Database
The Danish survey included the following sentences to test the placement of a full DP object in a lade-infinitive when the agent of the infinitival verb is implicit: (3) a.  (White = high score, grey = medium score, black = low score).
In addition, the Danish questionnaire included the following lade-causatives where the agent of the embedded verb is expressed: (5) a. (White = high score, grey = medium score, black = low score).

Nordic Dialect Corpus
There are only few examples of lade 'let' (and cognates) in the Nordic Dialect Corpus, and the variation suggested by the ScanDiaSyn survey is therefore not captured in the corpus.Several of the examples involve imperatives with a first person pronominal object, as in (7).Here, the object precedes the sentence adverb (as might be expected from the results of the survey).

Age and gender variation in NSD
As noted above the sentence with høre 'hear' and the order adverb-subject (#1056) received an average medium score in several locations.This depends on inter-speaker variation that is not only geographically determined: some speakers judge the sentence as fully grammatical, other speakers reject it, but few speakers give it a medium score.For this sentence, it cannot be directly determined whether the variation relates to age or not; the survey did not include younger informants.There is no clear pattern relating to gender, either: in some locations, women tend to accept the sentence to a higher extent than men, but in other locations it is the other way around.
3.2 Theoretical issues relating to lade-causatives Platzack (1986a) argues that the difference between Danish and Swedish with regard to word order in ladecausatives relates to other differences in the structure of infinitival clauses, and, specifically, to the different  (1986a:131).The Danish lade-infinitive would then resemble a passive, but without passive morphology.In fact, the agent can be expressed by a by-phrase, just like in a passive, but without passive morphology; see (8).Faarlund et al. (1997:100)  With respect to the placement of a pre-infinitival pronoun, lade and høre seem to behave much alike in most Danish dialects, and the pronoun largely patterns with ordinary object pronouns, whether it is an underlying subject or an underlying object of the infinitive.As we have seen, in these constructions a non-shifted pronoun is typically possible in Southern Denmark, on Als and AErø.The possibility of a non-shifted pronoun is somewhat more widespread when the pronoun is the subject of the infinitive.In the ScanDiaSyn investigation of object shift, non-shifted object pronouns were rejected in Denmark, except on AErø (see Bentzen 2014).

Historical Development
As noted above, Icelandic and Swedish differ from the other languages by only allowing the order infinitiveobject in lade-causatives.This seems to be largely the pattern also in Old Swedish, although Old Swedish is generally assumed to be an OV-language.In fact, in the runic inscriptions, examples with lata 'let' account for many of the cases with VO-order; a transliterated example is given in ( 13). ( Adverb-object-verb order under lade 'let' (#1054: Bo lod jo den reparere.'Well, Bo let repair it.')in Danish.Map 2: Object-adverb-verb order under lade 'let' (#1055: Bo lod den jo reparere.'Well, Bo let repair it.')in Danish.
infinitival marker in the languages.With respect lade-causatives, he suggests that the object of the infinitive in Danish is moved to the subject position of the infinitival clause, when the agent is implicit makes the same observation for Norwegian.Swedish examples corresponding to (8) are ungrammatical, unless the infinitival verb is passivized and the object is in a position before the infinitive; 'He let her be painted by a famous artist.'Platzacknotes the same difference between Danish and Swedish in høre-infinitives; cf.(10a) and (10b).'Ihaveheardhim mentioned.'(Platzack1986a:130)However,in Swedish, höra (unlike låta) does not allow the subject of an active infinitive to remain implicit, even with the object following the verb; see (11).
Falk 1993)1986b)urs with an infinitive of an intransitive or a passive verb, but occasionally also with a transitive verb (cf.Platzack 1986b and Delsing & Falk in prep.).The order infinitive-subject disappears around the 17th-18th century, andPlatzack (1986b)suggests that it is tied to fact that Swedish loses the possibility of null non-referential subjects around that time (cf.Falk 1993).Many of the Old Swedish examples are grammatical in Modern Swedish if an expletive is inserted; cf. the Old Swedish example in (14a) with Modern Swedish in (14b).In Old Swedish, the subject of the infinitive could be omitted also with other ECM-verbs than lata (see furtherDelsing & Falk in prep.).However, as noted by Platzack, there are also Old Swedish examples with post-verbal definite subjects, which would not be grammatical with an expletive in Modern Swedish.An example is given in (15).Platzack accounts for examples like these by assuming that certain ECM-infinitives are more clause-like than others, and that there is more than one possible position for the infinitival verb.As pointed out byDelsing &   Falk (in prep.),Old Swedish often had ECM-infinitives with clausal properties, and used ECM-infinitives where in Modern Swedish, a that-clause would be the only option.
'Signjut and Åvid let raise the stone after Ofeg, their father.'(UL945,11thcentury)InOldNordic,subjects of infinitives embedded under lata and other ECM-verbs sometimes appear in a position after the infinitive (seeWessén 1965:343).Levander (1909:121f)claims this possibility still exists in Övdalian (or did so in the beginning of the 20th century).Levander gives the example lat sjå Margit lit.'let see Margit', with the interpretation 'let Margit see'.According toAlving (1918), a post-infinitival subject is more common with lata than with other ECMverbs in Old Swedish.