Verb second and its deviations: An argument for feature scattering in the left periphery

Abstract

This article focuses on the analysis of verb-second (V2) requirements in light of evidence that the clausal left periphery contains a series of functional projections in a fixed hierarchy (Rizzi 1997;Benincà & Poletto 2004; among many others). I discuss previous approaches to V2, the bottleneck effect and stacked head theories, and argue that they are generally unable to account for a variety of "relaxed" V2 systems that allow V3 or V4 in some contexts. I propose a new analysis of variation in the strictness of V2 in terms of the feature scattering hypothesis (Giorgi & Pianesi 1996); languages can vary in the number of functional category features that are bundled on individual heads. This allows a straightforward account for the attested typology of relaxed V2 systems, and a new explanation for cross-linguistic variation in the instantiation of functional projections.Keywords: syntax; verb-second word order; bottleneck effect; feature scattering The cartographic program and the problem of restricted instantiationFollowing Rizzi (1997) a variety of evidence has emerged to suggest that the left edge of the clause, the traditional complementizer phrase, contains additional internal structure. Numerous works within the cartographic approach propose that rather than a single projection, the left edge of the clause includes a series of distinct functional projections, collectively referred to as the extended left periphery. These functional heads perform the various functions of complementizer-like elements, generally related to clause typing and the encoding of information structure. While the body of research within the approach has given rise to many proposed structures, we will consider for illustrative purposes the "core"

Coalescence: A Unification of Bundling Operations in Syntax

“…On this view, (1) is the only possible configuration of features [X], [Y]. While both approaches are compatible with the observation that extended projections contain an intricate, possibly universal hierarchy of features (Cinque 1999), they make different predictions about possible movements and the availability of specifier positions (Bobaljik and Thráinsson 1998, Erlewine 2016, Douglas 2017, Hsu 2017).…”

“…Although not always couched in the same terms, Feature Scattering has been applied to variation in subject positions in the IP domain (Poletto 2000), Infl 0 and Agr 0 (Iatridou 1990, Ouhalla 1991, Speas 1991, Bobaljik 1995, Thráinsson 1996, Bobaljik and Thráinsson 1998, Voice 0 and Causative 0 heads (Pylkkänen 2002), C 0 and Infl 0 (Bennett, Akinlabi, andConnell 2012, Erlewine 2018), deixis and reference in the nominal domain (Panagiotidis 2014, Höhn 2016, Hsu and Syed 2019, and the extended complementizer domain (Douglas 2017, Hsu 2017.…”

“…To illustrate how Coalescence accounts for Feature Scattering analyses, I present a reinterpretation of my earlier analysis of verb-second (V2) effects (Hsu 2017), which aims to generate a range of attested "strict" and "relaxed" V2 patterns. In well-known "strict" V2 patterns like that of Standard German and Dutch, finite verbs move to a C-domain projection and are preceded by a single phrase.…”

Overt speakers in syntax

“…Thus, split and remerged representation were proposed for TopP (Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl 2007;Frascarelli 2007), ForceP (Cognilio & Zegrean 2012) or FinP (Hill & Alboiu 2016), to mention only a few relevant areas. Beyond cartography, the bundling/remerging of heads has been proposed to account for tense, aspect, mood (Giorgi & Pianesi 1997), tense and agreement (Bobaljik 1995;Thráinsson 1996), complementizer systems (Bianchi 1999), causatives (Pylkkänen 2008), V2 requirements (Hsu 2017), Austronesian voice systems (Erlewine et al 2018;Erlewine 2019).…”

A Criterial Approach to the Cartography of V2

“…This subsection is inspired by the work ofHsu (2017) which explored the two theories in relation with V3 orders.…”