Morphology-Driven Syntax
A theory of V to I raising and pro-drop
This book argues that syntactic parameters are set in a principled fashion on the basis of overt functional morphology. The main focus of the book is on the different positions of the finite verb in the Germanic SVO languages. In addition, other syntactic phenomena (null subjects, transitive expletive constructions and object shift) and other language families (Romance, Semitic and Slavic) are discussed. A common explanation for all of the discussed phenomena is proposed: If and only if the features for “person” are distinctively marked by the agreement morphology, the agreement affixes are listed separately in the lexicon and project phrases of their own in syntax where they attract the verb to the head positions and allow the specifier positions to be filled by various phonologically (un)realized elements. Special attention is given to issues of historical development and child language acquisition.
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 15] 1999. viii, 296 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
-
Acknowledgments | p. vii
-
I. Introduction | p. 1
-
II. Verb Movement in the Germanic Languages | p. 11
-
III. Agreement Morphology in the Syntax and the Lexicon | p. 93
-
IV. Diachronic Germanic Syntax and the Full Paradigm | p. 155
-
V. Beyond Verb Movement in the Gemranic VO Languages | p. 205
-
VI. Conclusions | p. 275
-
-
Subject Index | p. 291
“This book addresses the syntactic problem of why the verb must move to Infl in some languages whereas it must stay in situ in others. Bernard Rohrbacher presents a solution to this problem after considering an impressive amount of data from a variety of Germanic languages (English, German, Mainland Scandinavian, Faroese, Icelandic, Yiddish) and even more interestingly, extends his predictions to Romance languages (Italian, French, European and Brazilian Portuguese).
”
”
Javier Gutierrez-Rexach in Language 77:4
Cited by (91)
Cited by 91 other publications
Koeneman, Olaf, Seid Tvica & Hedde Zeijlstra
2023. Rich Agreement and Verb Movement. In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Morphology, ► pp. 1 ff. 
Zimmermann, Richard
2023. An improved test of the constant rate hypothesis: late Modern American English possessive have
. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 19:3 ► pp. 323 ff.
Groothuis, Kim A.
2022. Non-finite Verb Movement in Romance. Probus 34:2 ► pp. 273 ff.
Groothuis, Kim A.
2022. Non-finite Verb Movement in Romance. Probus 34:2 ► pp. 273 ff.
Hein, Johannes
2021. Verb movement and the lack of verb-doubling VP-topicalization in Germanic. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 24:1 ► pp. 89 ff.
Murphy, Andrew
2021. Rightward verb movement: A reappraisal. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 24:3 ► pp. 319 ff.
Suitner, Caterina, Anne Maass, Eduardo Navarrete, Magdalena Formanowicz, Boyka Bratanova, Carmen Cervone, Juho Eemeli Hakoköngäs, Toon Kuppens, Eleni Lipourli, Tamara Rakić, Andrea Scatolon, Catia P. Teixeira, Zhenlan Wang, Maria Pedro Sobral & Antonin Carrier
2021. Spatial agency bias and word order flexibility: A comparison of 14 European languages. Applied Psycholinguistics 42:3 ► pp. 657 ff.
Abraham, Werner
2020. Modality in Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics,
Jung, Hakyung
2020. Thebe‐auxiliary's categorial status in Old Russian1. Studia Linguistica 74:3 ► pp. 613 ff.
Walkden, George & Anne Breitbarth
2019. Complexity as L2-difficulty: Implications for syntactic change. Theoretical Linguistics 45:3-4 ► pp. 183 ff.
Somers, Katerina
2018. Verb-third in Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch
. NOWELE. North-Western European Language Evolution 71:1 ► pp. 56 ff.
Duguine, Maia
2017. Reversing the Approach to Null Subjects: A Perspective from Language Acquisition. Frontiers in Psychology 8
KOIKE, KOJI
2017. THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEGATIVE-INITIAL CONSTRUCTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH. ENGLISH LINGUISTICS 33:2 ► pp. 307 ff.
Pintzuk, Susan, Ann Taylor & Anthony Warner
2017. Corpora and Quantitative Methods. In The Cambridge Handbook of Historical Syntax, ► pp. 218 ff.
Romano, Francesco Bryan
2017. Morphological variability in L2 Italian. ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics 168:2 ► pp. 203 ff.
Thráinsson, Höskuldur, Caroline Heycock, Hjalmar P. Petersen & Zakaris Svabo Hansen
2017. Introduction. In Syntactic Variation in Insular Scandinavian [Studies in Germanic Linguistics, 1], ► pp. 1 ff.
Castillo, Concha
2016. The Morphological Trigger of V-to-T: The Case of Old English. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 51:1 ► pp. 5 ff.
Castillo, Concha
2017. The Neural Signature of Syntactic Processing. Complutense Journal of English Studies 25 ► pp. 27 ff.
Eide, Kristin Melum
2016. Finiteness, inflection, and the syntax your morphology can afford. In Finiteness Matters [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 231], ► pp. 121 ff.
Eide, Kristin Melum
Haeberli, Eric & Tabea Ihsane
2016. Revisiting the loss of verb movement in the history of English. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 34:2 ► pp. 497 ff.
McGinnis-Archibald, Martha
2016. Distributed Morphology. In The Cambridge Handbook of Morphology, ► pp. 390 ff.
Putnam, Michael T. & John Lipski
2016. Null arguments in transitional trilingual grammars: Field observations from Misionero German. Multilingua 35:1
Westergaard, Marit
2016. Word order and finiteness in acquisition. In Finiteness Matters [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 231], ► pp. 257 ff.
Garbacz, Piotr
2015. Optional V-to-I movement
in Övdalian. In Studies in Övdalian Morphology and Syntax [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 221], ► pp. 87 ff.
Garbacz, Piotr
2019. Morphology and syntax in the Scandinavian vernaculars of Ovansiljan. Linguistic Variation 19:2 ► pp. 199 ff.
Pöll, Bernhard
2015. Caribbean Spanish = Brazilian Portuguese? Some comparative thoughts on the loss ofpro-drop. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 8:2 ► pp. 317 ff.
Ramírez-Trujillo, Alma P. & Joyce Bruhn de Garavito
2015. Verbal agreement in the L2 Spanish of speakers of Nahuatl. In The Acquisition of Spanish in Understudied Language Pairings [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 3], ► pp. 49 ff.
Sze, Felix
2015. Is Hong Kong Sign Language a topic-prominent language?. Linguistics 53:4
Koeneman, Olaf & Hedde Zeijlstra
2014. The Rich Agreement Hypothesis Rehabilitated. Linguistic Inquiry 45:4 ► pp. 571 ff.
Ackema, Peter & Ad Neeleman
2013. Person features and syncretism. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 31:4 ► pp. 901 ff.
Heycock, Caroline & Joel Wallenberg
2013. How variational acquisition drives syntactic change. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 16:2-3 ► pp. 127 ff.
Ledgeway, Adam
2013. Testing linguistic theory and variation to their limits: The case of Romance. Corpus :12 ► pp. 271 ff.
Petzell, Erik Magnusson
2013. Relative inversion and non-verb-initial imperatives in Early Modern Swedish. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 36:1 ► pp. 27 ff.
Heycock, Caroline
2012. Specification, equation, and agreement in copular sentences. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 57:2 ► pp. 209 ff.
VanPatten, Bill, Gregory D. Keating & Michael J. Leeser
2012. Missing verbal inflections as a representational problem. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 2:2 ► pp. 109 ff.
Androutsopoulou, Antonia, Manuel Español-Echevarría & Philippe Prévost
2010. The syntax/morphology interface in Spanish L2 acquisition: Focus on quantified DPs. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 55:2 ► pp. 149 ff.
de Garavito, Joyce Bruhn, David Heap & Ana T. Pérez-Leroux
2010. Introduction to the special issue on Hispanic linguistics in Canada. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 55:2 ► pp. 145 ff.
Hermas, Abdelkader
2010. Language acquisition as computational resetting: verb movement in L3 initial state. International Journal of Multilingualism 7:4 ► pp. 343 ff.
Heycock, Caroline, Antonella Sorace & Zakaris Svabo Hansen
2010. V-to-I and V2 in subordinate clauses: an investigation of Faroese in relation to Icelandic and Danish. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 13:1 ► pp. 61 ff.
Rosenkvist, Henrik
2010. Null Referential Subjects in Övdalian. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 33:3 ► pp. 231 ff.
Craenenbroeck, Jeroen van
2009. 9 Conclusion and Theoretical Implications. In The Syntax of Ellipsis, ► pp. 112 ff.
Craenenbroeck, Jeroen van
2009. 3 The Data. In The Syntax of Ellipsis, ► pp. 13 ff.
Craenenbroeck, Jeroen van
2009. 1 Introduction. In The Syntax of Ellipsis, ► pp. 3 ff.
Craenenbroeck, Jeroen van
2009. 4 Theoretical Background: Splitting Up CP. In The Syntax of Ellipsis, ► pp. 29 ff.
Craenenbroeck, Jeroen van
2009. 13 The Analysis. In The Syntax of Ellipsis, ► pp. 172 ff.
Craenenbroeck, Jeroen van
2009. 17 General Conclusions. In The Syntax of Ellipsis, ► pp. 244 ff.
Craenenbroeck, Jeroen van
2009. 5 The Analysis. In The Syntax of Ellipsis, ► pp. 47 ff.
Craenenbroeck, Jeroen van
2009. 7 Previous Analyses. In The Syntax of Ellipsis, ► pp. 76 ff.
Craenenbroeck, Jeroen van
2009. 11 The Data. In The Syntax of Ellipsis, ► pp. 123 ff.
Craenenbroeck, Jeroen van
2009. 15 Conjugated ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ in SDR-Dialects. In The Syntax of Ellipsis, ► pp. 208 ff.
Craenenbroeck, Jeroen van
2009. 10 Short Do Replies. In The Syntax of Ellipsis, ► pp. 121 ff.
Craenenbroeck, Jeroen van
2009. 12 Theoretical Background. In The Syntax of Ellipsis, ► pp. 156 ff.
Craenenbroeck, Jeroen van
2009. 6 When Spading Met Swiping. In The Syntax of Ellipsis, ► pp. 68 ff.
Craenenbroeck, Jeroen van
2009. 2 Introduction. In The Syntax of Ellipsis, ► pp. 11 ff.
Craenenbroeck, Jeroen van
2009. 16 Conclusion and Theoretical Implications. In The Syntax of Ellipsis, ► pp. 239 ff.
Van Craenenbroeck, Jeroen
2009. The Syntax of Ellipsis,
NAWATA, HIROYUKI
2009. CLAUSAL ARCHITECTURE AND INFLECTIONAL PARADIGM: THE CASE OF V2 IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH. ENGLISH LINGUISTICS 26:1 ► pp. 247 ff.
Nie, Da's & Da's Wel
2009. 14 Spelling Out the Proform. In The Syntax of Ellipsis, ► pp. 188 ff.
Hróarsdóttir, Þorbjörg
2008. Types of DPs in OV order. Studia Linguistica 62:3 ► pp. 261 ff.
KISHIMOTO, HIDEKI
2008. On the variability of negative scope in Japanese. Journal of Linguistics 44:2 ► pp. 379 ff.
Angantýsson, Ásgrímur
2007. Verb‐third in embedded clauses in Icelandic*. Studia Linguistica 61:3 ► pp. 237 ff.
Angantýsson, Ásgrímur
2015. On the morpho-syntax of verb/adverb placement and fronting in embedded clauses in Modern Övdalian. In Studies in Övdalian Morphology and Syntax [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 221], ► pp. 47 ff.
Frascarelli, Mara
2007. Subjects, topics and the interpretation of referential pro. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 25:4 ► pp. 691 ff.
McWhorter, John
2007. 7 Colloquial Arabic. In Language Interrupted, ► pp. 165 ff.
McWhorter, John
2007. 3 Epistemological Caveats. In Language Interrupted, ► pp. 51 ff.
McWhorter, John
2007. 6 Persian. In Language Interrupted, ► pp. 138 ff.
Pereltsvaig, Asya
2007. The universality of DP: A view from Russian*. Studia Linguistica 61:1 ► pp. 59 ff.
Tanaka, Tomoyuki
2007. The rise of lexical subjects in English infinitives. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 10:1 ► pp. 25 ff.
Wiklund, Anna-Lena, Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson, Kristine Bentzen & Þorbjörg Hróarsdóttir
2007. Rethinking Scandinavian verb movement. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 10:3 ► pp. 203 ff.
Ouhalla, Jamal
2005. Agreement Features, Agreement and Antiagreement. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 23:3 ► pp. 655 ff.
Vikner, Sten
2005. Immobile complex verbs in Germanic. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 8:1-2 ► pp. 85 ff.
Vikner, Sten
2006. Object Shift. In The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, ► pp. 392 ff.
Vikner, Sten
2017. Object Shift in Scandinavian. In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Second Edition, ► pp. 1 ff.
Vikner, Sten
2020. The Placement of Finite Verbs. In The Cambridge Handbook of Germanic Linguistics, ► pp. 365 ff.
Radford, Andrew
2004. Minimalist Syntax,
Radford, Andrew
2020. An Introduction to English Sentence Structure,
Lopes, Ruth E. Vasconcellos
2003. The production of subject and object in Brazilian Portuguese by a young child. Probus 15:1
Thainson, Höskuldur
2003. Syntactic Variation, Historical Development, and Minimalism. In Minimalist Syntax, ► pp. 152 ff.
White, Lydia
2003. Second Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar,
Bobaljik, Jonathan David
2002. Syncretism without paradigms: Remarks on Williams 1981, 1994. In Yearbook of Morphology 2001 [Yearbook of Morphology, ], ► pp. 53 ff.
Wakabayashi, Shigenori
2002. The acquisition of non-null subjects in English: a minimalist account. Second Language Research 18:1 ► pp. 28 ff.
Santorini, Beatrice
1996. Studies in comparative Germanic syntax. Edited by Hubert Haider, Susan Olsen, and Sten Vikner. (Studies in natural language and linguistic theory, 31.) Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995. Pp. v, 344. Hardcover. $96.00.. American Journal of Germanic Linguistics and Literatures 8:2 ► pp. 323 ff.
[no author supplied]
2006. Consolidated References. In The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, ► pp. 439 ff.
[no author supplied]
2007. Copyright Page. In Language Interrupted, ► pp. iv ff.
[no author supplied]
2009. Preface. In The Syntax of Ellipsis, ► pp. vii ff.
[no author supplied]
2009. Dedication. In The Syntax of Ellipsis, ► pp. v ff.
[no author supplied]
2009. Copyright Page. In The Syntax of Ellipsis, ► pp. iv ff.
[no author supplied]
2009. Abbreviations and Formats Used in Examples and Glosses. In The Syntax of Ellipsis, ► pp. xi ff.
[no author supplied]
2013. Verb Movement, Universal Grammar, and the Structure of IP, 1989. In An Annotated Syntax Reader ‐ Lasting Insights and Questions, ► pp. 233 ff.
[no author supplied]
2019. References. In A Contrastive Grammar of Brazilian Pomeranian [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 248], ► pp. 273 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CF: Linguistics
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General