and optionality in Scandinavian∗

This paper addresses the issue of optionality in complementizer insertion/drop and related subject-object asymmetries inn A´-dependencies, by focusing on the variation attested in Mainland and Insular Scandinavian. On the one hand, there is extensive literature discussing subject/object asymmetries in complementizer insertion/drop in Mainland Scandinavian A'-dependencies. On the other hand, Icelandic does not display such an asymmetry but is the only Scandinavian language with productive Stylistic Fronting, whereas Faroese displays a mixed behavior. This paper proposes a unifying analysis for Mainland Scandinavian, Icelandic and, potentially, Faroese, and argues that SF and SOM insertion are two different strategies to check one of the (at least) two features encoded on the lowest CP head Fin0. Such feature-checking mechanism ensures proper anchoring of the clausal semantic content (i.e. event structure and clausal arguments) to the discourse. The account is based on comparative synchronic and diachronic facts, such as recent findings on long extractions in Mainland Scandinavian, with respect to drop/insertion of the complementizer SOM, and the diachronic evolution and loss of SF in Old Swedish (Delsing 2001), by contrast to Icelandic