Acknowledgements

10–15 years ago, I was working as a dictionary editor for Norsk Ordbok (the Norwegian dictionary of spoken language and the Nynorsk written language), where I had the opportunity to do much empirical research on and write dictionary articles about prepositions. When I worked on the opp ‘up’ material, I found a passage from Ivar Aasen’s (1848: § 335) descriptive grammar of spoken Norwegian, where he claims that particles are generally distributed to the left of the object DP. The linguistic literature had to my knowledge always claimed a free particle alternation in Norwegian. This discrepancy was the starting point of my doctoral dissertation (Aa 2015b), which the empirical material in this book builds on. However, I have added new parts, and removed some, and the theoretical perspectives are also new.

First of all, I will thank the editors of Studies in Germanic Linguistics, Michael T. Putnam, B. Richard Page, and Laura Catharine Smith. In particular, Michael T. Putnam has been very helpful and encouraging throughout the process.

A special word of gratitude goes to my most important intellectual inspiration over the last 20 years, Professor Tor A. Åfarli, who has contributed significantly to this work with his wide theoretical knowledge and his empirical sharpness. I will also thank Professors Terje Lohndal and Mikael Vinka for detailed and insightful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript, which were much more than I could have asked for. The same applies to SiGLs anonymous reviewers; especially one of them made me rethink completely things that I thought that I had already thought too much about.

I will thank my friends and colleagues at the Norwegian section (Department of Teacher Education) and the Scandinavian section (Department of Language and Literature) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) for daily discussions and inspiration.

Last, and most importantly, I will thank my wife, Nina, and our three daughters, Astrid, Ingjerd, and Johanne, all of whom have contributed to this work in their own particular ways, but first and foremost to things not related to it.