From V1 to V2 in West Germanic

Hinterhölzl, Roland; Petrova, S. A.

doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2008.10.007

Cited by 51 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…(ii) The immediately preverbal constituent in V3 clauses is usually a subject, but not always (Koopman 1996;Pintzuk 1999), and usually pronominal, but not always (Bech 1998(Bech , 2001Haeberli 2002). (iii) The immediately preverbal constituent in V3 clauses is always given information that can be characterized as a familiar topic (Bech 1998(Bech , 2001Westergaard 2005;Hinterhölzl and Petrova 2009;Speyer 2010;van Kemenade and Milićev 2012), and is rarely prosodically prominent (as far as we are able to determine given our lack of access to spoken OE; Speyer 2010). (iv) V2 and V3 are found in main clauses, but not in subordinate clauses (except potentially in a small subset of root-like subordinate clauses; van Kemenade 1997).…”

Section: V2 and V3 In Old Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language contact and V3 in Germanic varieties new and old

Walkden

2017

J Comp German Linguistics

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Certain recently-attested varieties of Germanic V2 languages are known to deviate from the strict V2 requirement characteristic of the standard. This is the case, for example, for Kiezdeutsch, a new German dialect, as well as urban vernacular varieties of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish: descriptively speaking, in these varieties, subject-verb inversion may be absent under certain well-defined conditions. In this article I outline those conditions and the type of syntactic analysis required to account for them, claiming that an articulated left periphery is needed to account for the findings. The similarity of the V3 patterns found in these new varieties, which are geographically isolated from each other but which share a characterization in terms of the demographics of their speaker groups, invites a diachronic account in terms of language contact. I argue that transfer cannot account for V3, but that a scenario of sequential simplification and complexification is able to do so. Finally, turning to Old English, which exhibits similar (though not identical) V2/V3 alternations, I argue that a similar synchronic analysis can be upheld and that its diachronic origins may well also have been similar-a case of using the present to inform our approach to the past.

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Section: V2 and V3 In Old Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language contact and V3 in Germanic varieties new and old

Walkden

2017

J Comp German Linguistics

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“…Much of the data is drawn from Tomaselli (1995) andAxel (2007), although the analysis I develop is closer to that of Hinterhölzl and Petrova (2009b). Since many of the relevant facts about OHG are the same as for OE, this section will be briefer than the preceding one.…”

Section: The Structure Of the Left Periphery In Old High Germanmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Walkden (2009: 60) and Hinterhölzl and Petrova (2009b: 324) proceed to formalize the 7 information-structural patterns in terms of the cartography of the split CP in the tradition of Rizzi (1997). Here I will base my analysis on the more nuanced split-CP hierarchy presented in (7), from Frascarelli and Hinterhölzl (2007), following Hinterhölzl and Petrova (2009b). Multiple landing sites for the finite verb are needed; I hypothesize that these are (at a minimum) Force 0 and Fin 0 (cf.…”

Section: The Structure Of the Left Periphery In Old Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(10) There is no need to assume with Hinterhölzl and Petrova (2009b) that OHG differed substantially from OE in this regard. However, it is true that the movement of subject…”

Section: The Structure Of the Left Periphery In Old High Germanmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It will be argued that the possibility of V3 is more likely to be the result of shared retention than of innovation among these languages. The approach has in common with Hinterhölzl and Petrova (2009b) the idea that information structure is key to understanding the V2/V3 alternation, and that this should be captured in terms of a split CP. However, I call into question their hypothesis (2009b: 325-6) that V2 in OHG arose from reanalysis of V1 orders accompanied by a left-dislocated aboutness topic while V3 in OE/OS arose from reanalysis of V2 orders with initial familiar topic accompanied by a left-dislocated aboutness topic.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Verb-third in early West Germanic: A comparative perspective

Walkden¹

2015

Syntax Over Time

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German V2 and Doubly Filled COMP in West Germanic

Bácskai-Atkári

2020

J Comp German Linguistics

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The paper addresses the issue of Doubly Filled COMP effects in embedded interrogatives in West-Germanic languages, with particular attention paid to German: in these patterns, an overt interrogative operator co-occurs with an overt complementiser. Such configurations are ruled out from standard West-Germanic varieties, while they are attested in non-standard dialects. The paper argues that there are both theoretical and empirical arguments against the postulation of a Doubly Filled COMP Filter, proposing instead that the insertion of a visible complementiser in non-standard dialects in fact follows from the properties of the general syntactic paradigm in which empty complementisers are generally not possible. It is shown that doubling is not restricted to embedded constituent questions, but it may occur in polar questions as well. Further, the finiteness feature can be checked off by verb movement, as is the case in V2 patterns in German (and generally in Germanic, including historical English) and in T-to-C-movement in English. In this way, the property of V2 is linked to Doubly Filled COMP; in either case, there is no need to postulate a cartographic template with multiple projections but a minimal, merge-based model is sufficient and in fact favourable. The proposed model aims at accounting for the possible correlations between the properties of the head element and the properties of the fronted element merged as a specifier (if there is any). Finally, the observed syntactic differences between standard varieties and dialects in West Germanic can be attributed to minimal lexical differences.

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From V1 to V2 in West Germanic

Cited by 51 publications

References 15 publications

Language contact and V3 in Germanic varieties new and old

Language contact and V3 in Germanic varieties new and old

Verb-third in early West Germanic: A comparative perspective

German V2 and Doubly Filled COMP in West Germanic

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