Left branch extraction of nominal modifiers in old Scandinavian

Old Scandinavian differs from modern Scandinavian in allowing Left Branch Extractions of nominal modifiers. In this paper I argue that this difference is related to a difference in noun phrase structure between old Scandinavian and modern Scandinavian: old Scandinavian is a language where modifiers like adjectives, quanti-fiers and numerals are adjoined to NP, whereas in modern Scandinavian such modifiers are heads, taking the noun or its extended projection as its complement. The change from old Scandinavian to modern Scandinavian is seen as the result of a grammaticalization that follows van Gelderen’s (2004) economy principle “Be a head rather than a phrase”