Chapter 2 On V2: history and current analyses
2.0. Verb Second languages: an overview
As stated at the end of chapter 1, over the last twenty years it has become clear that a single projection in the LP was insufficient to capture the quality and the quantity of the elements which cross-linguistically occur within the domain of the CP. Despite such considerable empirical evidence, a portion of the syntactic community still objects the Split-CP hypothesis drawing on languages like Standard German, in which only one element (2) occurs in the LP, differently from Italian (1).
(1) Italian
A Maria, domani, il tuo libro, glielo devi dare al più presto.
To Maria, tomorrow, your book, you it-to should give as soon as possible
(2) German
a. Jan hat das Buch gelesen John has the book read
‘John has read the book’
b. *Das Buch Jan hat das Buch gelesen c. *Gestern Jan hat das Buch gelesen
d. Ich denke, dass Jan gestern das Buch gelesen hat I think that John yesterday the book read has.
‘I think that John read the book yesterday’
e. Ich glaube, Jan hat gestern das Buch gelesen I believe John has yesterday the book read
‘I believe, John read the book yesterday’
As shown by the examples in (2), German requires the verb to fill the second21 linear position in main clauses. In those embedded contexts (2b) overtly displaying the complementizer (2d), the verb remains very low in the structure. German (since Erdmann 1886) belongs to a bigger set of languages referred to as Verb Second languages (henceforth V2). Most contemporary Germanic languages are V2: Dutch (Den Besten 1983; Haegeman 1996), Mainland Scandinavian, Insular Scandinavian (Vikner 1995 inter alia), Yiddish (Santorini 1989) and Afrikaans (Biberauer 2002) as well as older stages of Germanic (Benucci 1997: 47; Walkden 2014), including Old English (Fischer et al. 2001;
Haeberli 2002). Modern English is the only contemporary Germanic language without V2 in root contexts, but it has some residual (Rizzi 1996; or partial in Sailor 2016) instances of V2. V2 is also attested in Breton (Roberts 2004), Kashmiri (Bhatt 1999;
Manetta 2011), Estonian, Sorbian (a Slavic language spoken at the border between Germany and the Czech Republic), in two dialects of the Indo-Aryan language Himachali (Holmberg 2015), and in the Nakh-Dagestanian (Caucasic) language Ingush spoken in Russia (Nichols 2011). Proto Indo-european (Kiparsky 1995) has been considered V2, and as well have older stages of Romance languages (Benincà 1983, 1995; Poletto 2014;
Wolfe 2015). The only modern Romance language with V2 orders is (the sum of different varieties of) Rhaetoromance spoken in Italy (Poletto 2002; Casalicchio & Cognola 2014) and in Switzerland (Fuß 2005; Anderson 2005, 2016). Finally, Dinka, a Nilo-Saharan language spoken in South Sudan (Van Urk & Richards 2015: 6) is a V2 language of a particular type, to be discussed in further details in section 3.1.3.
The standard analysis involves the movement of the verb to the Left Periphery. The intuition (Den Besten 1983, see next section 2.1.) emerges from an asymmetry between main and embedded clauses. In (3a), the verb occupies the “second position” in main clauses, whereas in (3b) the verb remains in a lower functional projection in embedded clauses. In those embedded contexts which are not introduced by an overt complementizer22 (3c, 3d), the verb moves like in main clauses:
21 Being the second element can only be referred to as a byproduct of subjacent syntactic phenomena. As already stated by different authors (Zwart 1992: 76 a.o.), grammars are not sensitive to notions like “first”
or “second”.
22 V2 structures like (3c, 3d) are allowed in embedded contexts selected by bridge verbs (cf. Poletto 2014:
6 for a similar pattern in Old Italian).
(3) a. Giotto malte dieses Fresko Giotto painted this fresco
b. Der Stadtführer sagt, dass Giotto dieses Fresko malte The tourist.guide says that Giotto this Fresco painted c. Der Stadtführer glaubt - Giotto malte dieses Fresko the tourist.guide thinks Giotto painted this Fresco
Den Besten (1983) clearly and elegantly proposed that the verb and the complementizer both compete for the same position. Thus, it was easy to analyse V2 as verb movement to a C position. The aim of this chapter is to locate the landing site of the verb within a fine-grained map of the Left Periphery.
Despite some language-specific exceptions (e.g. Cimbrian, cf. Bidese et al 2016), there are no great restrictions (Biberauer 2002) concerning the type of the first constituent before the inflected verb. The only requirement is that only one item is placed to the left of the finite verb. The quality of the fronted element can be diverse: subject DPs (4a), object DPs (4b), PPs (4c), embedded clauses (4d), higher and lower adverbs of Cinque's (1999) hierarchy (4e, 4f), bare (4g) and complex Wh-elements (4h), temporal (4i) and locative items (4j), predicates (4k), past participles (4l), experiencer DPs of impersonal psych-verbs (4m), expletives (4n), particles of particle verbs (4o), XPs which represent smaller portions of XPs (4p), big XPs conceived as only one XP containing multiple embedded XPs (4q) and big DPs (4r and it will be further discussed in section 5.3.0.2.).
(4) Standard German a. Subject
Der Travertin-Brunnen trägt das Familienwappen der Piccolomini.
The travertine.well wears the coat of arms of Piccolomini.
'The well made of travertine marble displays the coat of arms of the Piccolomini family'
b. Object
Den Beinamen ‚der Prächtige‘ erhielt Lorenzo Tha.ACC nickname “the magnificient” had Lorenzo.
'Lorenzo was known as “the magnificient”'
c. PP
Für die europäische Malerei ist Lorenzettis Regierung ein Schlüsselwerk.
For the European painting is Lorenzetti's government a key work 'Lorenzetti's government is a work of major importance’
d. CP
Wenn man Giottos Werke betrachtet, kann man immer wieder Neues When one Giotto’s works observes, can one always again new entdecken
discover
'When one observes Giotto’s works, one can always discover something new'
e. Higher Adverb in Cinque’s (1999) hierarchy
Natürlich war Perugino der Lehrmeister von Raffael Naturally was Perugino the master of Raphael 'Naturally, Perugino was the master of Raphael'
f. Lower Adverb in Cinque’s (1999) hierarchy
Schon immer habe ich mich für toskanische Malerei interessiert Always have I myself for Tuscan painting interested
‘I always found interesting Tuscan painting’
g. Bare wh, argument
Wer stahl das Caravaggios „Christi Geburt“?
Who stole the Caravaggio’s “Nativity”?
'Who did steal the “Nativity” by Caravaggio?’
h. Complex wh, non-argument
Welchen Malern ist diese Abteile des Museums gewidmet?
Which.DAT painter.DAT is this section of the museum dedicated?
‘To which painter is dedicated this section of the museum?’
i. Temporal Items
Nach 1320 kehrte Giotto nach Florenz zurück After 1320 turned Giotto to Florence back 'Giotto came back to Florence after 1320'
j. Locative Items
Auf der linken Seite befindet sich ein kleines Fresko von Sano di Pietro.
On the left side arranged self a small fresco of Sano di Pietro.
'A small fresco by Sano di Pietro is on the left side'
k. Predicative Adjective
Faszinierend ist Michelangelos David Fascinating is Michelangelo’s David
‘Michelangelo’s David is fascinating‘
l. Past Participle
Bemalt hat Signorelli nur diese Seite des Kreuzgangs Painted has Signorelli only this side of the cloister
‘Signorelli painted only this side of the cloister’
m. Experiencer DPs of impersonal psych-verbs Mir war gestern fürchterlich heiß.
Me.DAT was yesterday terribly hot 'I felt terribly hot yesterday'
(Mohr 2009: 146; 7c)
n. Expletives
Es wird vermutet, dass Giotto mit der Bemalung des Gemäuers bereits
EXPL is assumed, that Giotto the painting of the walls, already begann bevor die Kirche komplett fertiggestellt war.
started before the Church complete built was
‘It is assumed that Giotto started the painting of the walls before the Church was entirely built.’
o. Particle of Particle Verbs
An mache ich das Licht erst, wenn es ganz dunkel ist On make I the light first, if EXPL all dark is.
‘I first turn the light on, if it’s dark’
(Felfe 2012: 17)
p. smaller portion-XP
[Um zwei Millionen Mark] soll er versucht haben, [eine Versicherung __
Around two millions Deutschmark should he tried have, an insurance ___
zu betrügen]
to cheat
‘He reportedly tried to cheat an insurance (policy) for two millions Deutschmarks’
(S. Müller 2013: 4; 2 from taz 04.05.2011:20)
q. big XP
Seinen Schüler prüfen muß ein Professor nicht His.ACC Pupil to-test.INF must a Professor NEG
‘A professor should not test his student’
(S. Müller 2005: 10; 27) r. big DP
Den Mann, den habe ich gesehen The.ACC man d.ACC have I seen
(Grohmann 2000 from Roberts 2004: 317)
V1 contexts should also be considered V2 structures, because the leftmost item could be argued to be present in the configuration despite the fact that it is not phonetically overt.
Yes/No (henceforth Y/N) questions (5a) might be the result of the fronting of a non-overt Polarity Phrase (PolP, Holmberg 2015). I propose23 a similar explanation for why questions, adopting the idea that why is base generated within the CP (in IntP as in Rizzi 2001, or in a lower CP position and moved to IntP as stated in Shlonsky & Soare 2011), in (5b). Another kind of V1 is the so-called if-inversion (or asyndetic conditionals, Breitbarth et al. 2015 inter alia), related to the English sentence-type ‘Should you require any further information, please contact us’: I propose that in (5c) the verb targets a C position (e.g. Force°). Finally, a similar structure can be proposed for Imperative (5d) sentences (cf. Henry 2002), where the verb targets Force°, the highest functional projection.
(5) Yes/No question (fronting PolP) a. War Bondone Giottos Vater?
Was Bondone Giotto’s father?
‘Was Bondone the father of Giotto?’
Why question (fronting PolP + base generation of why item) b. Warum hat Michelangelos Moses zwei Hörnchen?
Why has Michelangelo’s Moses two horns?
‘Why does Moses by Michelangelo two horns’?
If-Inversion (fronting PolP)
c. Wäre ich an deiner Stelle, hätte ich Assisi besichtiget Were I at your place, had ich Assisi visited
‘If I were at your place, I would have visited Assisi’
23 The proposal in (5) should be taken as a theory-internal driven hypothesis due to the lack of a finer cartography of co-occurring left peripheral items in the LP of German.
Imperative (fronting PolP)
d. Analysieren Sie die Farben in diesem Fresko!
Analize You the coulours in this fresko!
‘Analyze the colours in this fresko’
Other complementizers (ob ‘if’, als ‘for’, etc.) and relative operators (cf. Sanfelici et al.
2015 for a discussion on acquisition studies and an overview) create structures similar to those introduced by dass ‘that’. The only structures which show a complementizer co-occurring with verb movement are those introduced by denn ‘because/for’ (for a comparative analysis with the French puisque, see Jivanyan & Samo 2017) and es sei denn ‘unless’, in (6).
(6) a. Denn
Beile dich, denn ich habe keine Zeit Move you, because I have no time
‘Move, I have no time!’
b. Es sei denn
Wir gehen heute Abend aus, es sei denn es gießt in Strömen We go today night out, unless EXPL pours in storm
‘Tonight we go out, unless it flows’
I will not discuss weil ‘because’ in this section, as it is well known (Reis 2013; Walkden 2017) that it behaves like denn in colloquial German at least for speech-act and epistemic readings (Günthner 1996, Jivanyan & Samo 2017, section 4.2.3 of this work). Before exploring the mainstream hypotheses that aim to merge together the cartographic approach and V2, I will briefly introduce the history of V2 within Generative Grammar.