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This paper proposes to split Rizzi’s (1997) ForceP into two distinct projections: Illocutionary Force (ILL) and Clause Type (CT). The proposal is meant to capture the cross-linguistic properties of discourse particles at the discourse level (they modify the illocutionary force by turning it into a more specific force reflecting the speaker’s intentions/attitude, Jacobs 1986, 1991), and also their syntactic restrictions. Specifically, each particle can occur in certain clause types, but not in others, and they are only licensed in clauses with ‘root properties’. In order to account for these facts, we will adopt a feature valuation mechanism along the lines of Pesetsky & Torrego (2007).

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In this paper, we investigate the properties of Old High German relative clauses. A striking fact is that the finite verb in these constructions may either precede or follow its object(s). We survey different possible factors proposed in the literature that could determine the relative order of the verb and its objects (VO/OV order), such as type, time, and place of origin of the text, information-structural properties of the object of the relative clause, presence of a relative particle, definiteness of the antecedent, specificity of the referent, and type of the relative clause (restrictive or appositive). Our investigation is based on a corpus of nontranslated texts. It reveals that the only factors that have statistically significant influence on word order are the type of the relative clause and some information-structural properties of the object of the relative clause.*

All German modal particles share important common properties. However, in a diachronic perspective, their origin has often been explained by assuming that they have grammaticalized from different types of lexemes belonging to several word classes: adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, etc. The present paper intends to dissipate some erroneous assumptions about the grammaticalization paths of modal particles and to offer a novel syntactic approach that explains their origin and development. By following and elaborating on some recent ideas, I will explore the hypothesis that modal particles have an adverbial origin and will provide corresponding evidence. In the syntactic analysis, I will claim that all modal particles originate from specific types of (strong) lower adverb(ial)s that become weak sentential adverbs under reanalysis.