Generalizedx‐to‐C in Germanic

Abstract

This paper highlights striking similarities of three well-known but hitherto disparately treated alternations in Germanic morphosyntax: (i) the positional alternation of the finite verb between a low and a left peripheral (V2) position; (ii) the morphological alternation in adnominal adjectives between socalled weak and strong agreement; and (iii) the contrast in definiteness marking between a free DP-initial definite article and a so-called suffixed article. The number and kinds of punctual similarities among these alternations suggest that we are dealing with a parallelism that is non-accidental (even if not always fully surface apparent).In an attempt to propose a principled account of this parallelism, I argue that the familiar syntactic CP/DP analogy must (A) be extended to include the extended adjectival projection (xAP), and (B) that it is more than an analogy. It is, I claim, a point-wise isomorphism. I identify a shared complementizer head C, which, I claim, extended projections of all colors converge on. In Germanic, C is either lexicalized/identified qua head, as d-, or it attracts the lexical category of its containing extended projection, indiscriminately of whether it is verbal, nominal, or adjectival. Movement of the lexical category to the left periphery results, in many cases, in its preceding material which it does not precede in the absence of such movement, notably inflectional material.If correct, the proposed isomorphism hypothesis has consequences for the analysis of the phenomena involved in that it allows us to transfer insights from one domain to another. In particular, it supports an analysis of the adjectival inflection alternation in terms of adjective movement; and an analysis of V2 as involving two merger steps.

A Criterial Approach to the Cartography of V2

“…Evidence for such a proposal may come from 'What happened questions', as in (3.3.2). Lenerz (1977) observed that scrambling (51 A') is not 59 a felicitous strategy in out-ofthe-blue contexts as in (51 A'').…”

“…No "bottleneck effect" in FinP and intervening materials between the inflected verb and the subject A criterial approach to V2 opens up the possibility of a formal mechanism not requiring a bottleneck effect in SpecFinP. A bottleneck may exist higher, according to the activated criterial position able to block movement of items of the same "structural type" (building Lenerz 1977, Hinterhölzl 2006.…”

“…(7) A rich LP in V2 languages As (7) shows, a criterial approach to V2 opens up the possibility of a formal mechanism not requiring a bottleneck effect in SpecFinP. A bottleneck effect may exist higher, according to the activated criterial position able to block movement of items of the same "structural type" (building on Lenerz 1977, Hinterhölzl 2006. Scrambled elements share some properties with criterial positions: they cannot be felicitous answers in "What happened questions" (section 3.4.1.)…”

The syntax of Basque allocutive clitics

“…In addition, following Laka (1993), Arregi & Nevins (2012) and Gómez & Sainz (1995), the foregoing discussion has assumed that, in the absence of a suitable person clitic, the first position slot is filled with an expletive morpheme. Let us assume that this reflects an EPP property of Fin, akin to standard approaches to V2 (Chomsky 2000;Roberts 2004;Holmberg 2015;Leu 2015). Let us state this requirement as in (50) for the time being.…”

Cartography and Microparametric variation: Criterial V2 in Swiss Romansh varieties

“…Mary says that John always books readsInspired byLeu (2015)'s proposal,Samo (2018a) postulates that the subordinators in (nonembedded V2 languages like) German are first generated IP internally (in an AgrSP position in CARDINALETTI 2004's system) and then moved to Force° through Fin° and all the activated criterial positions. The lack of a Spec-Head configuration in LP positions is due to the fact that the copy of the complementizer in the IP is able to block the movement of the verb to the head of the activated criterial position in terms of fRM, as in (24) 10 .…”