Agreement inflection and word order in Viskadalian Swedish

In this article, I investigate the varying morphosyntax of 20th century Viskadalian Swedish. Viskadalian verbs are inflected for both person and number. The Rich Agreement Hypothesis (RAH) posits an interdependence between such rich agreement and movement of the finite verb from V to I. However, only in the central parts of the Viskadalian dialect area (CV) is V-to-I an option; in Southern Viskadalian (SV), V must remain in situ (in VP). This lack of V-to-I in SV certainly appears to falsify the RAH. I argue, however, that it follows from SV and CV agreement being
categorically different. Although both are semantically rich, only CV agreement is morphologically distinct, crucially triggering V-to-I. By contrast, in SV, agreement is embedded under tense.