Verbstellung und Verbstellungswandel in den romanischen Sprachen

Lexical typology through similarity semantics: Toward a semantic map of motion verbs

“…As pointed out by Kaiser (2002Kaiser ( , 2005 and Dahl (2007), Bible translations have the advantage that they allow us to trace diachronic developments, if translations from various stages are attested. For example, the restricted usage of Modern Spanish venir (only used in strictly deictic 'come' contexts) is a recent development, as previously observed by Ricca (1993: 131) andde Icaza (1916).…”

Initial subordinate clauses in Old French: Syntactic variation and the clausal left periphery

“…Vance et al (2010) argued that their data revealed the earliest available evidence of the loss of V2 in Old French and that the steadily increasing proportion of SV reflected a change in progress during which the V2 grammar was replaced by SV. They couched their analysis in terms of grammars in competition (Kroch, 1989). Accordingly, at a given point in time during the loss of V2 in Old French, utterances could reflect either the conservative V2 grammar or the emerging SV grammar.…”

“…Old French is often analyzed as a verb-second (V2) language (e.g., Adams, 1987Adams, , 1989Roberts, 1993;Vance, 1997) because the finite verb typically occupies the second position of main declaratives. However, main declaratives whose verb appears in third position or higher (V≥3) are readily attested, an observation that underlies recent challenges to the V2 analysis of Old French (e.g., Kaiser, 2002;Becker, 2005;Rinke and Meisel, 2009; see also Meisel, 2011). An important subset of V≥3 orders involves sequences of an initial subordinate clause followed immediately by a main declarative, as noted by Vance (1997:64).…”

Late Latin Verb Second: The Sentential Word Order of the “Itinerarium Egeriae”

“…Whether these cases are genuinely syntactically motivated is, however, less clear inasmuch as they could presumably be readily integrated with the preceding pragmatic and modal cases of verb-fronting since, with the exception of negation, the triggers all involve reference to speaker perspective. Now, while the V2 status of medieval Romance is widely supported by detailed statistical studies like those cited in footnote 3 above (but see Martins 1994;Kaiser 1999Kaiser , 2002Kaiser , 2002Sornicola 2000;Rinke 2009;Sitaridou 2012), similar conclusions for late Latin are based on somewhat superficial and impressionistic evidence. For example, Clackson & Horrocks (2007: 292) recognize a V2 pattern in the late fourth-century Itinerarium Egeriae 'Travels of Egeria', where they identify 'an underlying order with the verb occupying the first position in the sentence, with an optional focus slot before it, which may be filled by a verbal argument (subject as default) or an adverbial phrase' (cf.…”

“…Under one proposal, V2 is to be interpreted as movement of the finite verb to T° with fronting of some other thematic or rhematic constituent to SpecTP (cf. Martins 1994;Kaiser 1999Kaiser , 2002Kaiser , 2002Sornicola 2000;Rinke 2009;Sitaridou 2012). This analysis leaves the higher C position available to host lexical complementizers.…”