In this article we investigate the status of two different types of movement in subordinate clauses in Faroese: the movement of the finite verb to a position below the subject but above negation and medial adverbs (V-to-I), and the movement of some XP and the finite verb to positions above the subject (V2). The exact status of these phenomena in contemporary Faroese, a language that has been argued to be undergoing syntactic change, is a matter of dispute; we attempt to clarify this using the methodology of Magnitude Estimation (ME). We extend what is known by presenting the results of a systematic comparison of judgment data from Icelandic (where the finite verb obligatorily moves to a high position within the clause, and embedded V2 has been claimed to be possible quite generally), Danish (where the finite verb obligatorily remains in a low position, and embedded V2 has been claimed to Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (

While all of the Scandinavian languages have verb-second order in main clauses, they vary in the word order in subordinate clauses: in Icelandic the finite verb appears in a high position, to the left of negation and sentence-medial adverbs, while in all of the standard Mainland Scandinavian languages it remains in a low position, to the right of these elements. This order in Mainland Scandinavian is known to be the result of a historical change, and has frequently been tied to the loss of agreement morphology. Faroese has been argued to be currently undergoing a change of the same type, but it has proved difficult to establish a sound empirical footing for the various claims about the syntax of this language. In this article we present data from three experimental investigations of acceptability, supplemented with a study of available texts, that show that the language is very close to completing the change in the loss of the high position for the verb, but that its syntax is still distinct in this respect from that of Danish, the mainland Scandinavian language with which it is in most contact. In addition to establishing a firmer empirical basis for theories of verb movement, our study also makes the methodological point that grammaticality-judgment tasks can yield extremely fine-grained results even in cases where variability is at issue.

Faroese is at the tail-end of a change from an Icelandic-type syntax in which V-toT is obligatory to a Danish-type system in which this movement is impossible. While the older word order is very rarely produced by adult Faroese speakers, there is evidence that this order is still marginally present in the adult grammar and thus only dispreferred, rather than completely ungrammatical. Here the results are presented of an experimental study of older Faroese children: 5-year old children both accept and produce the older word order, 6 year olds do so significantly less, and 10 year olds behave like adult speakers. We discuss a number of possible interpretations of the children's variability in the context of residual effects of diachronic change in Faroese.

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This paper explores the syntax of agreement in Insular Scandinavian in copular clauses with two potential goals for agreement. Data from three production experiments-one in Faroese and two in Icelandicestablish several new facts. First, in both languages agreement with the second nominal (DP2) is possible/preferred. Second, there is considerable variation (both within and between languages, and indeed speakers) in the patterns observed. Third, Icelandic shows a surprising pattern of "partial" agreement with DP2-agreement in number but not person. We discuss the implications for current theorising about agreement, proposing that in these languages, at least, agreement is downwards, and that the available agreement options depend in part on the syntactic position of DP1 when agreement is established.

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