SIL talk by Nicholas Catasso (University of Wuppertal)

Verb Third and a cartographic approach to the structure of the left periphery in German

Present-Day German has traditionally been regarded as a strict Verb-Second (V2) language in light of the assumption that its prefield, namely the left-peripheral area of the clause preceding the finite verb situated in C°, can only be occupied by one XP in matrix clauses. According to this principle, only one constituent can (and must) move to Spec,CP to satisfy an EPP-like feature carried by C that requires that the pre-C° position not be empty in main clauses (Den Besten 1977)

However, recently a number of so-called “Verb-Third” (V3) phenomena have been discussed in the literature that seem to involve the activation of a larger portion of structure than the assumption of a one-projection prefield would suggest (for German a.o.: Lühr 1985, Auer 2000, Müller 2003, Breindl 2011, Freywald et al. 2015, Wiese et al. 2020, Breitbarth 2022).

In this talk, these patterns – and in particular their interplay – are discussed with respect to their derivation within one and the same theoretical framework (the cartographic model), as well as in relation to their implications for the structure of the left periphery. It will be proposed that these apparent non-V2 arrangements, which are generally treated independently, are derivable by means of a limited number of syntactic operations (combining Merge and Move) that do not challenge or put into question the classical account of German as a structural V2 language, i.e. without assuming any violations of the contraints regulating the filling of the left periphery.

In particular, I will make the following claims:

• The formal mechanisms leading to V2 orders (the EPP feature, the bottleneck in C, etc.) are inviolable and part of the syntactic computation of main clauses. V2 is not a linear, but rather a structural constraint. Thus, the attested V3 and other Verb-Later orders are to be categorized as variants of V2 that are derived according to principles that are compatible with the a/m operations.
• German also exhibits a Split CP that is similar – mutatis mutandis – to that of Modern Romance, but makes use of different derivational strategies to achieve the relevant linearization(s).
• This insight can only be gained if (at least) comparable methods and (at least) comparable theo-retical assumptions about the syntax of German are used to interpret the data.

(Selected) references

Auer, P. 1998. Zwischen Parataxe und Hypotaxe: ‚abhängige Hauptsätze‘ im gesprochenen und geschriebenen Deutsch. Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik 26: 284–307.

Breindl, E. 2011. Nach Rom freilich führen viele Wege: Zur Interaktion von Informations-struktur, Diskursstruktur und Prosodie bei der Besetzung der Nacherstposition. In G. Ferraresi (ed.), Konnektoren im Deutschen und im Sprachvergleich. Beschreibung und grammatische Analyse. Tübingen: Narr, 17–57.

Breitbarth, A. 2022. Prosodie, Syntax und Diskursfunktion von V>2 in gesprochenem Deutsch. Deutsche Sprache 1/22: 1–30.

Den Besten, H. 1977. On the interaction of root transformations and lexical deletive rules. In W. Abraham (ed.), On the formal syntax of the Westgermania. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 47–131.

Freywald, U, L. Cornips, N. Ganuza, I. Nistov & T. Opsahl. 2015. Beyond verb second – a matter of novel information structural effects? Evidence from Norwegian, Swedish, German and Dutch. In J. Nortier & B. Svendsen (Hg.), Language, youth and identity in the 21^st century. Linguistic practices across urban spaces. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 73–92.

Lühr, R. 1985. Sonderfälle der Vorfeldbesetzung im heutigen Deutsch. Deutsche Sprache 13: 1-23.

Müller, S. 2003. Mehrfache Vorfeldbesetzung. Deutsche Sprache 31/1: 29–62.

Wiese, H., M. T. Öncü, H. G. Müller & E. Wittenberg. 2020. Verb Third in spoken German. A natural order of information? In S. Wolfe & R. Woods (eds.), Rethinking Verb Second. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 682–699.