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Verb movement and the lack of verb-doubling VP topicalization in Germanic

  • 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 theIn 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.show moreshow less

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Metadaten
Author details:Johannes HeinORCiD
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-021-09125-5
ISSN:1383-4924
ISSN:1572-8552
Title of parent work (English):The journal of comparative Germanic linguistics
Publisher:Springer Science + Business Media B.V.
Place of publishing:Dordrecht
Publication type:Article
Language:English
Date of first publication:2021/04/03
Publication year:2021
Release date:2023/01/25
Tag:Copy deletion; Freezing; Head movement; V-to-C movement; V-to-T; VP-topicalization; Verb doubling; Verb second; movement
Volume:24
Issue:1
Number of pages:56
First page:89
Last Page:144
Funding institution:Projekt DEAL
Organizational units:Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik
DDC classification:4 Sprache / 43 Deutsch, germanische Sprachen allgemein / 430 Germanische Sprachen; Deutsch
4 Sprache / 43 Deutsch, germanische Sprachen allgemein / 439 Andere germanische Sprachen
Peer review:Referiert
Publishing method:Open Access / Hybrid Open-Access
License (German):License LogoCC-BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International
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