Verb Second word order

Verb Second word order

(39) * Been they have running?

There might well be independent reasons for some of these effects. It might be, for instance, that English morphology does not allow participles to inflect for tense and agreement. And yet, all of the blocked outcomes fit a generaliza-tion that it might be worthwhile crediting for the whole class of cases. Travis (1984) has made just such a proposal. She suggests that there is a constraint on movement rules that relocate X⁰s that blocks them from moving past other X⁰s. She calls this condition the “head movement constraint,” and I will for-mulate it as (40).²

(40) The Head Movement Constraint

No X⁰ may move past a Y⁰that c-commands it.

As we will see, this feature of the grammar of English verb placement can be assigned to Universal Grammar. The Head Movement Constraint seems to gov-ern instances of X⁰ Movement in other languages.

the I⁰ of these IPs that employs Head Movement, they too are head final in German.

Interestingly, we find a different word-order in root, or independent, clauses.

Here, the inflected verb no longer comes finally in the series. Instead it appears immediately following the subject. So unlike (41), we find only the word order in (42).

(42) a. Hans John

kauft buys

das the

Buch.

book b. Hans

John hat has

das the

Buch book

gekauft.

bought c. Hans

John muß must

das the

Buch book

gekauft bought

haben have

This seems to suggest that there is a movement rule which relocates finite verbs into the position immediately following the subject. Using the logic of the cor-relation argument, we might imagine that the position where finite inflection is in German immediately follows the subject, and it’s into this position that finite verbs are driven in German.

But this would miss the fact that the position of the finite verbs differs for embedded and independent clauses. What we want is some way of forcing verbs to move into the post-subject position in root clauses only. This suggests that it is not the finite distinction that is responsible for verbs’ position in root clauses, but something else. Something that distinguishes root from embedded clauses.

We’ve already seen a similar difference in the grammar of English: recall that I⁰-to-C⁰ movement is restricted to root clauses in English. Perhaps the verbs are moving through I⁰into C⁰ in cases like (42), then. This would credit German and English with two differences. On the one hand there is the differ-ence in headedness that we see most directly in embedded contexts. And then there is something that allows/forces subjects to move past C⁰ in embedded clauses. We might imagine that this second force, whatever it is, is like the pro-cess that moves wh-phrases in English into Specifier of C⁰. Thus, the examples in (42) might get a parse like that in (43) on the next page. The subject moves into Specifier of IP, to satisfy the EPP, and then into Specifier of CP. The finite verb follows the subject because it moves through I⁰ into C⁰, as indicated in (44) below.

Verb Second word order

(43) CP

NP

Hans

C

C IP

I

VP

V

I

VP V

hat V

NP

das Buch V

gekauft

(44) CP

NP

Hans

C

C

I

V

hat I

C

IP

I

VP

V

VP

V

NP V

This leads to the expectation that we might find other phrases preceding the finite verb; and we do. It is not just the subject that may immediately precede the finite verb in root contexts, any phrase can. When some other phrase comes before the verb, the subject (typically) immediately follows the finite verb and the phrase that shows up at the front is understood to be “topicalized.” We can capture these word-orders by letting the finite verb move into C⁰ in all these clauses, but letting the Specifier of CP be filled by any phrase through a movement rule. Thus, alongside (43) we also find (45).

(45) CP

NP

das Buch

C

C

I

V

hat I

C

IP

NP

Hans

I

VP

V

VP

V

V

gekauft

The generalization about German word-order can be described this way: any phrase may be initial, but exactly one must be. German is sometimes described as having “Verb Second” word-order for this reason. The account we’ve just sketched of this captures Verb Second by way of a rule that moves the verbs that have moved into finite I⁰into C⁰, and by moving anything, but something, into the single position that exists to the left of C⁰.

That the verb in these cases has in fact moved into C⁰ is further substan-tiated by cases where Verb Second word-order is found in embedded clauses.

Though there is considerable dialectal variation here, in the standard dialects,

Verb Second word order

V2 is possible in embedded clauses just in those cases where a complementizer

may go missing. As in English, it is possible in German to unexpress the com-plementizer when the CP it heads is the complement to a certain class of verbs.

The verb say, for example, can go without a complementizer — as in (46) — and when it does so in German we find V2 word-order, see (47).

(46) Jerry said (that) Sally has a dime.

(47) a. Er He

sagt, says

daß that

die the

Kinder kids

diesen this

Film film

gesehen seen

haben.

have

‘He says that the kids have seen the film.’

b. Er he

sagt, says

diesen this

Film film

haben have

die the

Kinder kids

gesehen.

seen

‘He says that, this film, have the kids seen.’

Despite the similarities in verb movement that German and English have, note that one place where they differ is whether main verbs fall under the scope of verb movement. Unlike English, German main verbs can undergo move-ment. This is seen by their ability to move into C⁰in main clauses, as in (42a).

There are a host of mysteries about the grammar of verb placement in Ger-man that we will not attempt to solve here. What, for instance, is responsible for forcing movement of something into the Specifier of CP in German root clauses. And why isn’t the movement of a phrase into Specifier of CP allowed in embedded clauses, as in (48)?

(48) * Ich sagte [CP das Buch [ daß [IP Hans [VP gekauft] hat]]].

Vikner (1995) discusses some of the ideas that have been offered for answers to these questions.

There are some things that we might notice about the verb movement pro-cesses in German which are similar to the parallel propro-cesses in English. For example, the Head Movement Constraint is preserved in the grammar of verb placement in German. Sentences like the following, where haben (‘have’) moves past the modal are ungrammatical in German just as they are in English.

(49) * Hans John

haben have

das the

Buch book

gekauft bought

muß . must

Moreover, we can observe that there is a pattern to all these rules in German and English: the moved term always adjoins to another head. Because this ap-pears to be something that is the same across German and English, it is a can-didate language universal. Indeed, over a large range of cases examined across

languages, this generalization appears to hold up. This suggests a constraint movement rules that is sensitive to the phrase/head distinction. One of the first proposals for such a constraint is found in Baltin (1982), who argues that this is part of a more general constraint on movement rules. He proposes that the position to which a phrase or head is moved always has the same phrasal status as the phrase or head being moved. So a head adjoins to another head position only, and a maximal projection can only move to another maximal projection position, and so on. Let’s call this the Like-attracts-Likes Condition:

(50) Likes Attracts Likes

An X⁰ may only adjoin to, or substitute into, a position that is also an X⁰, and an XP may only adjoin to, or substitute into, a position that is an XP.

Finally, note that with the sole exception of Affix Hopping, the movement rules we have examined in these two languages all have the feature that the verb or I⁰that has moved has moved up. We don’t find cases where Verb Movement has relocated the verb downwards, as in examples like (51).

(51) a. * . . . daß . . . that

Hans Hans

das the

Buch book

gehabt had

kauft.

buys b. * John must had buy the book.

We have already found that this is a feature of the Argument Movement rule — it also relocates terms only to a position higher in the phrase marker.

Actually, we found that the constraint was more specific than this; it re-quired that the moved term relocated to a c-commanding position. Let us for-mulate this constraint, shared by both German and English Verb Movement rules, as follows.

(52) Upwards Constraint

αcan move to positionβonly ifβc-commandsα.

That this narrower condition is required for verb movement is shown by cases like (53), which would be possible if verbs could move to non-c-commanding positions.³

3 This parse does not reflect the topicalization that we’ve seen evidence for — recall, there is reason to believe that finite “subject” clause has been topicalized to IP.

Verb Second word order

(53) IP

CP

C

C

that

IP

NP

Mary

I

I

I

V

be I

I

VP

V

V

leave I

I VP

V

VP

V

V

bothering NP

her

This too looks like a good candidate for a universal condition: things only move to c-commanding positions.

Let’s take a look now at what we find with respect to verb placement in some of the other Germanic languages. In the Scandinavian languages we find a situation similar to German, as Vikner (1995) reviews. I will use Danish as a guide; much of what we see for Danish is found in Norwegian and Swedish as well.The same sensitivity to embedding is found in the placement of the finite verb in these languages. As the contrast in (54) indicates, Danish is like German in allowing any constituent, but only one, to precede the finite verb in independent clauses. That is, it shares with German the trait of being “Verb Second.”

(54) a. Børnen kids-the

har have

set seen

denne this

film film

‘The kids have seen this film.’

b. Denne this

film film

bar have

børnen kids-the

set.

seen

‘The kids have seen this film.’

c. * Denne this

film film

børnen kids-the

har have

set.

seen

‘The kids have seen this film.’

But, as (55) shows, these traits are not shared by dependent clauses, where, instead, the subject must precede the finite verb.

(55) a. * Jeg I

ved know

ikke not

hvor where

i går yesterday

har has

koen cow-the

stået.

stood

‘I don’t know where the cow stood yesterday.’

b. Jeg I

ved know

ikke not

hvor where

koen cow-the

har has

i går yesterday

stået.

stood

‘I don’t know where the cow stood yesterday.’

Moreover, as the contrasts in (56) show, the placement of the finite verb relative to negation is sensitive to the embedded/non-embedded context.

(56) a. Børnen kids-the

har have

ikke not

set seen

denne this

film.

film

‘The kids haven’t seen this movie.’

b. * Børnen kids-the

ikke not

har have

set seen

denne this

film film

‘The kids haven’t seen this movie.’

c. Jeg I

ved know

at that

børnen kids-the

ikke not

har have

set seen

denne this

film film

‘I know the kids haven’t seen this movie.’

d. * Jeg I

ved know

at that

børnen kids-the

har have

ikke not

set seen

denne this

film film

‘I know the kids haven’t seen this movie.’

This indicates that the finite verb has moved out of VP, past negation, into C⁰ in independent clauses, just as it does in German.

It looks, therefore, like Danish has the word-order of English — placing verbs before their objects — but the syntax of verb movement that German has. Note in particular that main verbs are able to move as well as auxiliary verbs, as we see partly in (55) (look at the root clause word-order). If we were to look further, we would see that Danish (and the remainder of Germanic) also have the range of constraints we have seen on verb movement operations.

There are a couple differences, however. One at least potential difference between Danish and German is the existence of V⁰-to-I⁰. Whereas we cannot easily discern whether such an operation exists in German, it apparently does not in Danish (nor does it in standard Norwegian and Swedish), since when the verb has not relocated into C⁰, it remains to the right of negation. (Of course,

Verb Second word order

we have made the perhaps incorrect assumption that negation occupies the

same place in Danish as it does in English.)

Another difference concerns the range of contexts where verb second is found in embedded contexts. Recall that in German the verb moves into C⁰in embedded clauses only in those contexts where a complementizer is not re-quired to fill that C⁰. But in Danish (as in the other Scandinavian languages), V2 word-order is possible even in those embedded clauses which have a com-plementizer associated with them, as in (57).

(57) Vi we

ved know

at that

denne this

bog book

har has

Bo Bo

ikke not

læst.

read

‘We know that Bo hasn’t read this book.

A variety of hypotheses about this situation have been offered — the chapter following — the assigned one in Vikner gives a good overview; let us adopt for concreteness the hypothesis that there is a CP “shell” that can be embedded within a regular CP. This CP shell provides the C⁰ into which verbs move in embedded clauses in Scandinavian.

So, let’s see what we’ve got so far. If we factor out the parts to the set of rules in German, Dutch and English that are common to the syntax of verb placement, we have the following:

(58) Universals

a. Likes Attracts Likes b. Upwards Constraint

c. The Head Movement Constraint e. Word Criterion

The differences that are left can be boiled down to the following four parts.

(59) a. German VPs (and IPs?) are head final.

b. English and Danish VPs (and IPs?) are head initial.

c. German and Danish: verbs (and I⁰?) are movable.

d. English: auxiliary verbs and I⁰ are movable.

e. German and Danish: Root C⁰ and Specifier of CP must be filled.

(i.e., V2)

f. English: Only wh-phrases move to Specifier of CP, and only ques-tions trigger I⁰-to-C⁰movement.

Putting this in the terms of language acquisition which we started with, the differences in (59) constitute what the child must learn in order to determine whether the grammar he or she is acquiring is German, Danish or English.