Object Shift or Object Placement in General

This paper addresses the phenomenon of pronominal object shift in Danish and Swedish and to which extent it is relevant to analyse object shift as an isolated choice between two positions. A corpus investigation reveals that there are distinct information dynamical strategies for the placement of pronominal objects in these languages. These strategied have not previously been discussed in connection with object shift and involve more positions than the IN SITU position and the SHIFTED position.

On the basis of this investigation, I argue that it is necessary to explore all positions for pronominal objects in order to analyse the underlying causes of objects appearing in the position traditionally referred to as SHIFTED.