TY  - JOUR
A1  - Hein, Johannes
T1  - Verb movement and the lack of verb-doubling VP topicalization in Germanic
JF  - The journal of comparative Germanic linguistics
N2  - In the absence of a stranded auxiliary or modal, VP-topicalization in most Germanic languages gives rise to the presence of a dummy verb meaning 'do'. Cross-linguistically, this is a rather uncommon strategy as comparable VP-fronting constructions in other languages, e.g. Hebrew, Polish, and Portuguese, among many others, exhibit verb doubling. A comparison of several recent approaches to verb doubling in VP-fronting reveals that it is the consequence of VP-evacuating head movement of the verb to some higher functional head, which saves the (low copy of the) verb from undergoing copy deletion as part of the low VP copy in the VP-topicalization dependency. Given that almost all Germanic languages have such V-salvaging head movement, namely V-to-C movement, but do not show verb doubling, this paper suggests that V-raising is exceptionally impossible in VP-topicalization clauses and addresses the question of why it is blocked. After discussing and rejecting some conceivable explanations for the lack of verb doubling, I propose that the blocking effect arises from a bleeding interaction between V-to-C movement and VP-to-SpecCP movement. As both operations are triggered by the same head, i.e. C, the VP is always encountered first by a downward search algorithm. Movement of VP then freezes it and its lower copies for subextraction precluding subsequent V-raising. Crucially, this implies that there is no V-to-T raising in most Germanic languages. V2 languages with V-to-T raising, e.g. Yiddish, are correctly predicted to not exhibit the blocking effect.
KW  - Verb doubling
KW  - Head movement
KW  - VP-topicalization
KW  - Copy deletion
KW  - V-to-T
KW  - movement
KW  - V-to-C movement
KW  - Verb second
KW  - Freezing
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-021-09125-5
SN  - 1383-4924
SN  - 1572-8552
VL  - 24
IS  - 1
SP  - 89
EP  - 144
PB  - Springer Science + Business Media B.V.
CY  - Dordrecht
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Wendt, Julia
A1  - Loew, Andreas
A1  - Weymar, Mathias
A1  - Lotze, Martin
A1  - Hamm, Alfons O.
T1  - Active avoidance and attentive freezing in the face of approaching threat
JF  - NeuroImage : a journal of brain function
N2  - Defensive behaviors in animals and humans vary dynamically with increasing proximity of a threat and depending upon the behavioral repertoire at hand. The current study investigated physiological and behavioral adjustments and associated brain activation when participants were exposed to dynamically approaching threat that was either inevitable or could be avoided by motor action. When the approaching threat was inevitable, attentive freezing was observed as indicated by fear bradycardia, startle potentiation, and a dynamic increase in activation of the anterior insula and the periaqueductal grey. In preparation for active avoidance a switch in defensive behavior was observed characterized by startle inhibition and heart rate acceleration along with potentiated activation of the amygdala and the periaqueductal grey. Importantly, the modulation of defensive behavior according to threat imminence and the behavioral option at hand was associated with activity changes in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. These findings improve our understanding of brain mechanisms guiding human behavior during approaching threat depending on available resources.
KW  - Defensive response patterns
KW  - Active avoidance
KW  - Freezing
KW  - Psychophysiology
KW  - fMRI
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.06.054
SN  - 1053-8119
SN  - 1095-9572
VL  - 158
SP  - 196
EP  - 204
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - San Diego
ER  -