244 Jennifer Herriman
in his Swedish exile by designing wallpapers – the Erskines decided in the face
of gloomy prospects to cut their living costs and find themselves somewhere
cheap to live. (EGE1T)
According to Miller (2001: 690), a subject clause may be retained in its canonical
subject position in English if the information it represents is discourse old, i.e. if
it has been mentioned earlier in the text and if its predicate provides the topic of
the following discourse. In (20), for instance, the nonextraposed subject clause Att
symbolen som sådan inte kunde lansera produkten / That the symbol, as such, can-
not launch a product connects to its preceding sentence (en slags symbol / a kind
of a symbol), and the predicate är en annan sak / is a different matter provides the
topic that is developed in the sentences that follow.
(20) I det här fallet kan “företaget” vara lika med dess namn, en slags symbol. Att
symbolen som sådan inte kunde lansera produkten är en annan sak. Det har
kanske skett av en grupp personer från verksamhetens marknadsföringsavdel-
ning. Denna grupp kan också i så fall ses som “företaget” i produktlanserings-
fallet. (BB1)
‘... That the symbol as such not could launch the product is another matter ...’
In this case the “company” can be the same as its name, a kind of a symbol.
That the symbol, as such, cannot launch a product is a different matter. This may
have been done by a group of persons from the marketing department of the
organization. This group may alternatively be considered as the “company”
in the case of a new product being launched. (BB1T)
If, on the other hand, it is the subject clause that provides the topic of the next
sentence, it is normally extraposed, as in (18) and (19) above, where the subject
clauses, that they were never used and to get commissions enough to support an
architect’s office, are elaborated on in the following text. In the Swedish originals
of (18) and (19), however, the subject clauses are retained in their subject posi-
tion before the verb. As their predicates do not provide the topic of the following
sentence, this would be somewhat less natural in English (cf. ?That they were never
used is nobody’s fault and ?because to get commissions enough to support an archi-
tect’s office was difficult). Moreover, the information in these subject clauses does
not, furthermore, connect to the immediately preceding sentence, as is the case in
(20), but to information somewhat earlier in the text.
Swedish appears thus to be less restrictive than English when it comes to
allowing subject clauses in their canonical preverbal position and subject clauses
may be placed in preverbal position even if there is some distance between their
informational content and its previous mention, as in (18) and (19). This reflects