Multiple Feature Inheritance and the phase structure of the left periphery

2020 ◽  
pp. 150-176
Author(s):  
Phil Branigan
Keyword(s):  
Phase Structure ◽  
Head Position ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Phase Theory ◽  
New Model ◽  
Island Effect ◽  
Multiple Feature ◽  
Feature Inheritance ◽  
Germanic Languages

Left-peripheral cartographic structures pose a challenge to phase theory models incorporating Feature Inheritance. This chapter effects a reconciliation of the different approaches that is based on the idea that Feature Inheritance can apply multiple times from the same phase head. A new model of Germanic Verb Second word order results, in which the displaced verb always occupies a phase head position, but the position itself may vary in different syntactic contexts. The model derives the strong Verb Second island effect in Germanic languages from phase theoretic principles. It is thereby shown that phase theory complements, rather than conflicts with, cartographic theory.

scholarly journals Roots of V-to-C Movement in Romance

2022 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 210-229
Author(s):  
André Antonelli
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Verb Raising ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Finite Verb

The paper investigates the syntactic structure of wh-clauses in late Latin. The results show that, in sentences with a wh-phrase as direct object, the interrogative operator reaches FocP in the left periphery, with the finite verb raising to the Foc head. This spec-head relation accounts for why subjects and dislocated XPs (like topics or focus elements) can not be intervening constituents between the object wh-phrase and the verb. For wh-clauses in which the interrogative operator is an adjunct, the hypothesis is that the wh-phrase occupies [Spec,IntP]. Here, the verb does not move to the CP-field, thus explaining the possibility of intervening subjects and interpolated XPs between the adjunct wh-element and the verb. These results show that the verb second (V2) property of V-to-C movement, as seen in several old Romance languages, can be derived from late Latin, and not exclusively from a supposed influence of Germanic languages, as is assumed in the literature.

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).

Relaxed Verb Second in Classical Portuguese

2020 ◽  
pp. 368-395
Author(s):  
Charlotte Galves
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Tycho Brahe ◽  
Contrast Feature

Based on the quantitative and qualitative study of 11 syntactically parsed texts (485,767 words) from the Tycho Brahe Parsed Corpus of Historical Portuguese, this chapter argues that Classical Portuguese, i.e. the language instantiated in texts written in Portugal by authors born in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is a V2 language of the kind that Wolfe calls ‘relaxed V2 languages’. These are languages in which V1 and V3 sentences coexist with V2 patterns. To account for the sentential patterns observed and their interpretation, a new cartographic analysis of the left periphery is proposed. The existence of sentences in which quantified objects precede fronted subjects suggests that there are two distinct positions in the CP layer to which preverbal phrases can move. The higher one is the familiar Focus category. It is argued that the lower one is neuter with respect to the topic/focus dichotomy and merely encodes a contrast feature. Other constituents can be adjoined at the higher portion of the left periphery where they are interpreted as topics or frames. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the importance of textually diversified corpora as the basis of historical syntactic studies.

Syntactic and Prosodic Reflexes of Information Structure in Germanic

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gisbert Fanselow
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Acoustic Properties ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Left Edge ◽  
Word Order Variation ◽  
Order Variation ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Finite Verb

This chapter deals with syntactic and prosodic reflexes of information structure in the Germanic languages. It begins with an overview of givenness and word order variation in the TP, along with aboutness topics and the prosodic prominence of topics and foci. It then considers the postulation of a focus head in Germanic and how contrast seems to intensify the acoustic properties of topics and foci. It shows how the left edge of verb second clauses acts as a slot for placing contrastive elements in all Germanic languages, but that the position is also filled on purely formal grounds. The article also describes the conditions of information structure that decide whether an XP can go to the position preceding the finite verb/auxiliary in the verb second (V2) constructions. Finally, it discusses two types of V2 constructions: unrestricted V2 constructions and pragmatically restricted V2 constructions.

The distribution of quantifiers in Old and Modern Italian

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacopo Garzonio ◽  
Cecilia Poletto
Keyword(s):  
Internal Structure ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
The Past ◽  
Verb Forms

This chapter considers the distribution of VO and OV orders in Old Italian when the object is represented by a quantified constituent. The investigation takes into consideration cases of VO/OV variation with complex analytic verb forms where V is the past participle and O contains a universal or a negative quantifier. It is shown that while OV with non-quantified DPs and complex QPs is optional, universal bare quantifiers always precede the past participle. It is proposed that bare quantifiers undergo obligatory movement to a dedicated position, which is a function of their internal structure. Moreover, it is argued that the modern stage of the language has preserved the movement of the quantifier, but this is not always visible because of a change in the movement properties of the verb: in generalized verb-second Old Italian the past participle remains trapped inside the vP left-periphery while it raises higher in Modern Italian.

scholarly journals How large is the left periphery of Present-Day German? A unifying approach to multiply-filled-prefield configurations

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 760-801
Author(s):  
Nicholas Catasso
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Head Position ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Bottleneck Effect ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Split Cp ◽  
Classical Account

Abstract In this article, it is proposed that different types of apparent “non-V2” arrangements in Present-Day German matrix clauses which are generally treated independently are similar in nature and derivable by means of a limited number of syntactic operations that do not challenge or put into question the classical account of German as a structural V2 language. The analysis reveals that an adequate formalization of all possible left-peripheral word orders must rest upon three basic assumptions: (i) V2 in Modern German main clauses can be neither movement to the head position whose specifier hosts a moved or base-generated XP nor (necessarily) movement to Force°, but can be generalized to raising of the Vfin to Fin°; (ii) German has a Split CP which is fundamentally similar, mutatis mutandis, to that of Romance languages; (iii) this language is subject to the bottleneck effect, which states that all movement into the CP passes through [Spec,FinP]. The theoretical approach pursued here attempts to account for left dislocation and other (frame-setting and non-frame-setting) topicalization phenomena by assuming that in German (differently from other Split-CP languages), XPs base-generated in the middle field move to their surface position by cyclical movement within the left periphery. This allows us to avoid ad hoc explanations, as well as violations of the bottleneck effect.

scholarly journals Experimental testing of the left periphery

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jose Sequeros-Valle
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Testing ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Discourse Function ◽  
New Model ◽  
Discourse Functions ◽  
Castilian Spanish ◽  
Acceptability Judgment

This manuscript presents an empirical description of the left periphery based on the performance of speakers of Castilian Spanish in a corpus analysis, an acceptability judgment task, and a scripted production task. The picture drawn by the three studies look as follows: First, clitic-doubled left dislocations (CLLD) fulfil multiple discourse functions, but the construction is not completely free from discourse restrictions. Second, canonical utterances are also able to fulfil CLLD’s discourse functions. Third, CLLD does not present distinctive intonational patterns depending on the discourse function. Fourth, there is partial evidence that focus fronting (FF) presents an intonational pattern different than that of CLLD. The concluding section of the manuscript calls from a new model of the left periphery.

scholarly journals Cartography, Left Periphery and Criterial Positions: an interview with Luigi Rizzi

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Quarezemin
Keyword(s):  
Left Periphery ◽  
Phase Theory ◽  
Syntactic Theory ◽  
The Future

ABSTRACT In this interview Luigi Rizzi discusses the ‘heuristic capacity’ of cartography and the functional lexicon, reinforcing important empirical issues for syntactic theory. Among the issues addressed by Rizzi are the tension between invariance and variation, the relations between cartographic representations and phase theory, the parametrization, the structural backbone and recursion, the criterial approach and freezing and the “future” of Cartography.

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