Since Maling's (1980) study of embedded verb-second, Icelandic Stylistic Fronting has been an extensively studied aspect of Icelandic syntax. It is widely regarded as an optional fronting operation which moves an ordinarily post-verbal constituent to the pre-verbal domain just in case there is a subject gap. In this study, variationist methodology is employed to study quantitatively the conditioning effects of several syntactic and prosodic factors on Stylistic Fronting in two transcribed corpora of spoken Icelandic. The results show that some grammatical categories favor fronting more than others, and that fronting is affected by the number of syllables in the frontable constituent and the material surrounding the landing site. This lends support to the long-standing intuition that prosodic factors influence the choice to use Stylistic Fronting (which is syntactically optional), while at the same time suggests avenues for further research in addressing certain issues in the syntax of Stylistic Fronting, such as the ‘accessibility hierarchy’.
