Doubling and <i>do</i>-support in verbal fronting: Towards a typology of repair operations

Abstract

Most known languages seem to follow the intuitive and economical implication that if they show a repair such as verb doubling or do-support when just the verb is fronted, they also show that same repair when the verb is fronted together with its internal argument(s) (provided that the language has both types of fronting). In this paper, I present data from Asante Twi, where the verb is doubled in the former case but there is do-support in the latter instead. I argue that the attested patterns can be accounted for under the Copy Theory of Movement by introducing different orders of the operations Chain Reduction (CR) and head movement (HM) at PF (analogous to what Schoorlemmer 2012 proposed for Chain Reduction and Local Dislocation). CR either bleeds HM giving rise to consistent do-support (as in German) or counterbleeds it leading to consistent verb doubling (as in Hebrew). The Asante Twi pattern is a result of the interaction of the bleeding order with Ā-head movement, where the bleeding effect of the order is neutralised by the inability of Ā-head movement to form chains, which is rooted in the Chain Uniformity Condition (Chomsky 1995). The account provides a unified minimalist analysis of verb doubling and do-support in verbal fronting, which derives all attested patterns but correctly precludes the derivation of the unattested reverse Asante Twi pattern.

Predicate fronting in Yiddish and conditions on multiple copy Spell-Out

“…32-b) If the sentences in (35) are to be derived using the same mechanisms outlined above for Yiddish-i.e., if both involve the fronting of a VP, either (a) as a remnant category following object shift or (b) as a full category without object shift-then what accounts for the fact that German does not generally exhibit verb doubling? Hein (2017) directly tackles this problem of cross-linguistic variability, arguing for the existence of Chain Reduction and verbal head movement as post-syntactic operations that are applied in different orders in different languages. For German sentences like those in (35), Hein assumes that the VP is fronted.…”

Betrayal through obedience: on the history of the unusual inflectional chain in Siyuewu Khroskyabs

“…The examples in ( 27) are double verb constructions with a bare verb marked by =də 'even', followed by a finite form of the same verb. This kind of construction is typical in languages with verb doubling involving the infinitive or citation form of the main verb or verb phrase placed before the original sentence, expressing verbal toplicalisation of focus (Hein 2017). The phenomenon can be found in many languages around the world, to name a few, Polish (Glottolog: poli1260) (Bondaruk 2009: 65), Ewegbe (Kwa) (Glottolog: ewee1241) (Ameka 1992: 12) and Sranan Tongo (Glottolog: sran1240) (Parkvall 2000: 89).…”

Two Different Types of Verb Phrase Fronting Constructions in Korean

“…In this paper, I will investigate the structure and properties of VP-fronting constructions in Korean. VP fronting is a widespread phenomenon across languages (Hein, 2017;Landau, 2006;Vincente, 2007Vincente, , 2009 among many others). As shown below, it is possible to displace the verb or entire verb phrase including the internal arguments to the beginning of a sentence.…”

“…[verb doubling VP fronting] Adapted from Kim (2019) As reported by Hein (2017), the fronted VP in VP fronting constructions across languages can be either nominalized or non-finite. Likewise, the fronted VP in Korean VP fronting constructions involve the nominalizer-ki followed by the topic-marker -nun.…”