Decomposing manner how in colloquial Scandinavian *

.  The shape of manner how varies to considerable extent across Scandinavian dialects, and many of them quite clearly have a complex internal structure. This paper investigates the internal structure of these many forms, and it will be argued that all forms of complex manner how can be derived from just two abstract templates. Furthermore, it will be shown that the complex forms of manner how unlike the simplex ones interact with other wh ‐items morpologically speaking: the wh ‐part will always be identical to the degree wh ‐item in the various varieties, which in turn will be identical in form to either where or what . The few simplex forms that exist are identical to degree how , but do not share internal structure (apart from wh ‐) with other wh ‐items. Moreover, many of the complex forms of manner how are also used as determiners, and a comparison with complex wh ‐determiners will reveal that at a certain level of abstraction such wh ‐items share important parts of structure.