Verb-movement

2019 ◽  
pp. 342-418
Author(s):  
Ian Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Event Semantics ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
History Of

The chapter begins with a very brief excursus into Davidsonian event semantics, explaining the basic motivation for positing event variables, as well as ‘separation’ of θ‎-roles from predicates. It then develops the TP-Denotation Hypothesis, i.e. the idea that events are denoted through the Tense feature. This naturally leads to a tripartite typology of Tense vs No-Tense languages, and Weak-Tense vs Strong-Tense languages. Strong-Tense (Romance), Weak-Tense (mainly English), and No-Tense (Chinese) languages are illustrated. The chapter then turns to other examples of cross-linguistic variation in verb-movement: V-initial languages and Germanic verb-second, where a novel labelling-based proposal for certain core properties is developed. The proposals regarding the changes affecting the ‘inversion’ system through the history of English made by Biberauer & Roberts are then summarized. The chapter concludes with a parameter hierarchy for Tense.

Embedded Verb Second in the history of German

2020 ◽  
pp. 555-572
Author(s):  
Svetlana Petrova
Keyword(s):  
Old High German ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Complement Clauses ◽  
History Of ◽  
Over Time

This chapter is a corpus study investigating the presence and the distribution of asyndetic (complementizerless) V2 complement clauses in Old High German. In modern German, such clauses represent well-known semantically restricted variants of canonical that-complements, but their existence in the earliest attestation is disputed. The present investigation argues that there is evidence for verb movement to C in asyndetic complement clauses in Old High German, and that the typology of V2-embedding predicates is stable over time. At the same time, it is shown that some additional conditions that limit the availability of V2 in the complements of individual classes of matrix predicates obviously emerge only after the Old High German period.

Verb Second in Medieval Romance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Wolfe
Keyword(s):  
Old French ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
Medieval Romance ◽  
Second Languages ◽  
Clausal Structure ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Null Argument

This book provides the first book-length study of the controversial subject of Verb Second and related properties in a range of Medieval Romance languages. Both qualitative and quantitative data are examined and analysed from Old French, Occitan, Sicilian, Venetian, Spanish, and Sardinian to assess whether the languages were indeed Verb Second languages. The book argues that unlike most modern Romance varieties, V-to-C movement is a point of continuity across all the medieval varieties, but that there are rich patterns of synchronic and diachronic variation in the medieval period which have not been noted before. These include differences in the syntax–pragmatics mapping, the locus of verb movement, the behaviour of clitic pronouns, the syntax of subject positions, matrix/embedded asymmetries, and the null argument properties of the languages in question. The book outlines a detailed formal cartographic analysis both of both the synchronic patterns attested and of the diachronic evolution of Romance clausal structure.

Verb-initial declaratives in Old High German and in later German

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Svetlana Petrova
Keyword(s):  
Main Part ◽  
Old High German ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Diachronic Syntax ◽  
Adequate Understanding ◽  
History Of ◽  
Syntactic Properties

This chapter investigates the syntactic properties and the pragmatic behaviour of verb-initial declarative clauses in the history of German. The focus is on OHG because in this period, verb-initial declaratives represent a frequent, well-known alternative to canonical verb-second main clauses. It is argued that verb-initial declaratives are native in origin, and that they are derivable under a special interpretation of the verb-second rule. The main part of the chapter deals with the pragmatic properties of verb-initial declaratives in OHG, summarizing the various attempts at explaining the distribution of these orders and showing that further research is needed to arrive at a more adequate understanding of their function in the discourse. The chapter closes up with the discussion of the later development of verb-initial declaratives in German, sketching the controversial treatments of this question in the literature on German diachronic syntax.

Clause Structure and Word Order in the History of German

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Clause Structure ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Right ◽  
Theoretical Analyses

Over roughly the last decade, there has been a notable rise in new research on historical German syntax in a generative perspective. This volume presents a state-of-the-art survey of this thriving new line of research by leading scholars in the field, combining it with new insights into the syntax of historical German. It is the first comprehensive and concise generative historical syntax of German covering numerous central aspects of clause structure and word order, tracing them throughout various historical stages. Each chapter combines a solid empirical basis and valid descriptive generalizations with reference also to the more traditional topological model of the German clause with a detailed discussion of theoretical analyses couched in the generative framework. The volume is divided into three parts according to the main parts of the clause: the left periphery dealing with verbal placement and the filling of the prefield (verb second, verb first, verb third orders) as well as adverbial connectives; the middle field including discussion of pronominal syntax, order of full NPs and the history of negation; and the right periphery with chapters on basic word order (OV/VO), prosodic and information-structural factors, and the verbal complex including the development of periphrastic verb forms and the phenomena of IPP (infinitivus pro participio) and ACI (accusativus cum infinitivo). This book thus provides a convenient overview of current research on the major issues concerning historical German clause structure both for scholars interested in more traditional description and for those interested in formal accounts of diachronic syntax.

Word-order change in progress: the case of Slovene and Serbo-Croat and its relevance for Germanic

1987 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Related Language ◽  
Slavonic Language ◽  
History Of ◽  
Order Change ◽  
The One ◽  
Word Order Change ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Fresh Insight

It will be suggested in this article that Slovene, a South Slavonic language, is on the way to acquiring verb-second (V2) word order. In providing evidence in support of this view I shall compare Slovene, on the one hand, with the closely related language Serbo-Croat and, on the other hand, with relevant details from the history of the Germanic languages. The point of comparing it with Serbo-Croat is to discover the respects in which the word order of these two languages has diverged. Taken together with what is known about the word order of Common Slavonic, the facts emerging from this comparison allow us to identify one major respect in which Slovene has changed and two respects in which it is still changing. At the same time, they reveal a major respect in which Serbo-Croat word order is also changing. The point of comparing Slovene with the Germanic languages is twofold. First, since all the present-day Germanic languages either have or have had V2 word order (Haiman, 1974), it is possible that their history can help us to understand the changes currently taking place in Slovene and to predict how Slovene might change in the future. Secondly, where details of the history of the Germanic languages are poorly understood, the possibility exists of gaining fresh insight into them in the light of the changes that have taken place more recently, or indeed are still taking place, in Slovene. In this connection we shall assess the plausibility of two theories concerning the adoption of V2 word order by the Germanic languages, those of Vennemann (1975) and Wackernagel (1892).

scholarly journals On the Acquisition of Word Order in WH-Questions in theTromsø Dialect

Nordlyd ◽  
10.7557/12.48 ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marit Richardsen Westergaard
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
Syntactic Form ◽  
Wh Questions

This article reports on a study of three children acquiring a dialect of Norwegian which allows two different word orders in certain types of WH-questions, verb second (V2) and and verb third (V3). The latter is only allowed after monosyllabic WH-words, while the former, which is the result of verb movement, is the word order found in all other main clauses in the language. It is shown that both V2 and V3 are acquired extremely early by the children in the study (before the age of two), and that subtle distinctions between the two orders with respect to information structure are attested from the beginning. However, it is argued that V3 word order, which should be ìsimplerî than the V2 structure as it does not involve verb movement, is nevertheless acquired slightly later in its full syntactic form. This is taken as an indication that the V3 structure is syntactically more complex, and possibly also more marked.

The scope of embedded Verb Second in modern Yiddish

2020 ◽  
pp. 665-681
Author(s):  
Molly Diesing ◽  
Beatrice Santorini
Keyword(s):  
Native Speaker ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
Embedded Clauses ◽  
Finite Verb

Embedded Verb Second (V2) clauses have been analysed as embedded main clauses or in terms of selection. This chapter presents data from both corpora and native speaker judgements showing that Verb Second order in embedded clauses in Yiddish goes well beyond what can be explained by either of the above approaches, with V2 possible and attested in interrogatives as well as declaratives. Adjunction of adverbials to V2 clauses is possible as well, yielding orders with the finite verb in third position (V3). But V3 resulting from lack of verb movement, as is seen in Mainland Scandinavian and (optionally) in Icelandic, is not found.

A different perspective on embedded Verb Second

2020 ◽  
pp. 297-322
Author(s):  
Rebecca Woods
Keyword(s):  
Speech Act ◽  
Illocutionary Force ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Embedded Clause ◽  
Matrix Verb

This chapter compares embedded verb movement phenomena in English with embedded Verb Second clauses in German and Swedish. Close examination of the syntactic—but more particularly the semantic and pragmatic—properties of these phenomena reveals striking similarities, and the claim is made that these phenomena exhibit independent illocutionary force in the sense that the perspective holder for the embedded proposition or question is disambiguated—a departure from the claim that embedded verb movement structures are asserted (cf. Julien 2015 and Chapter 11 of this volume). It is proposed, following recent innovations in speech act syntax (Wiltschko and Heim 2016; Woods 2016) that these structures are dependent, as the ‘embedded’ clause contains less structure than full a root clause, yet is still structurally larger than a typical embedded clause. However, they are not selected and are instead in an apposition relation with a (usually covert) nominal complement to the matrix verb.

Null referential subjects in the history of Swedish

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Håkansson
Keyword(s):  
Subject Position ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Movement Strategies ◽  
Old Swedish ◽  
History Of ◽  
Striking Change ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Person Agreement

This article is concerned with null referential subjects in Old Swedish (ca. 1225–1526), and addresses the problem of why the scope for such subjects has been reduced during the history of Swedish. Within diachronic syntax it has been a common assumption that syntactic change is caused by changes in morphology. However, this study shows that deflexion only to a limited extent can explain the loss of null referential subjects in Old Swedish, since the most striking change in their use seems to take place during Early Old Swedish (ca. 1225–1375) before the loss of person agreement: whereas referential subjects could be omitted from verb-second main clauses and subordinate clauses in Early Old Swedish, in Late Old Swedish corresponding subjectless clauses are uncommon. Within the framework of generative grammar it is argued that this is an effect of changes in movement strategies to the subject position, [Spec, IP]: whereas movement to the subject position is syntactically determined in Modern Swedish, in Early Old Swedish the corresponding move is pragmatically determined. The study is based on a corpus of approximately 193,400 words, collected from 12 Old Swedish texts.

Verb-third in Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-98
Author(s):  
Katerina Somers
Keyword(s):  
Old High German ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
The Status ◽  
Finite Verb

Abstract This article investigates the status of so-called verb-final declaratives in Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch, with a focus on whether clauses in which there is no apparent subordinator and the finite verb occurs later than the expected verb-first or verb-second position can be treated as verb-third (V3) clauses, as they are defined for Old High German in works such as Axel (2007) and Tomaselli (1995). Drawing on a set of 746 clauses, I argue that there is no evidence that the finite verbs in these clauses have undergone verb movement, as is claimed in the aforementioned works, nor are the asyndetic verb-late clauses with a verb in surface third position consistent with the patterns identified in the generative literature for the V3 type.

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