Crossing the lake

The Alemannic dialects spoken in Switzerland and in south-western Germany are structurally very similar. This seems to extend to the motion verb construction where the motion verb is obligatorily followed by an element gi/go followed by an infinitive. Upon closer inspection, however, intriguing asymmetries emerge. We account for these differences by treating gi/go as belonging to different syntactic categories. This synchronic difference in categorization can be related to different historical developments, as proposed by Lötscher (1993): both elements go back to the preposition gen ‘towards’ and developed into a functional head with purpose/goal semantics that combines with a non-finite verbal projection. We will show that while gi in Bodensee-Alemannic still heads this functional projection, go in Swiss German has been reanalyzed as a verbal element and is now integrated into the Verb Raising and Verb Projection Raising system.