Object shift is found in a subgroup of the Germanic languages, the Scandinavian languages. In Chapter 4, object shift will be compared to scrambling, which is a related movement of objects (among other things) that is also clause-internal, and which is found in a different subgroup of the Germanic languages, the Continental West Germanic languages. There is only one Germanic language which has neither object shift nor scrambling, and that is the most widely spoken language of the Germanic group, English.

Part I of the book (Chapters 1–5) discusses object shift in general.

This brief introductory chapter, Chapter 1, discusses different subdivisions within the Germanic languages, before object shift is properly introduced in Chapter 2, which outlines the variation in object shift found across the Scandinavian languages.

Chapter 3 presents the basic assumptions of Optimality Theory and reviews some previous optimality-theoretical analyses of object shift.

Finally, Chapter 5 summarises the findings of Part I.

Part II of the book (Chapters 6–9) focuses on the interaction between object shift and another syntactic movement, VP-topicalisation, that is, the movement of the verb phrase to the clause-initial position. We often refer to remnant VP-topicalisation, which is the same movement, except that one or more constituents have moved out of the VP before the VP is moved to the clause-initial position. The case that is particularly relevant here is the type of remnant VP-topicalisation that results from object shift applying before the VP is moved to the clause-initial position.

After an introduction in Chapter 6, Chapter 7 argues in favour of a remnant VP-topicalisation approach to occurrences of non-finite verbs in clause-initial position, rejecting a V°-topicalisation analysis.

Chapter 8 shows how object shift in remnant VP-topicalisation constructions can be accounted for in the optimality-theoretical analysis of object shift set out in Part I and discusses various asymmetries related to object shift during remnant topicalisation.

Chapter 9 summarises the results.

The following page shows two maps of where the Germanic languages are spoken today (while admittedly completely ignoring the many places where English is spoken outside the British Isles). The first map is of northern Europe, and the second one is of the southernmost part of Africa.

It is customary to divide the Germanic languages spoken today into two groups. This can either be done on a genetic (i.e. historical) basis or on a typological one, and the only difference concerns the status of English.

When divided along genetic lines, the Germanic languages consist of the Scandinavian (i.e. North Germanic) group and the West Germanic group, where all the languages in a group can be traced back to one and the same ancestor language (Old Norse for Scandinavian and Proto-West-Germanic for West Germanic):

Typological divisions focus on a particular feature or set of features, even if that means disregarding the historical relationship between languages. One very common typological division of the Germanic languages is the one between VO-languages (e.g. English, VO = verb-object order) and the OV-languages (e.g. German, OV = object-verb order). This difference is observable in the position of the object relative to the non-finite verb:

The Germanic OV-languages are sometimes referred to as the Continental West Germanic languages as English is not spoken in continental Europe (even though this term ignores the fact that Afrikaans is actually not spoken in continental Europe either).

The Scandinavian languages are all descendants of Old Norse, in fact they were all mutually intelligible dialects of this language until around 1200. Within the present day Scandinavian languages, a typological distinction is often drawn between Mainland Scandinavian and Island Scandinavian: