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Article published In:
What is a verb? – Linguistic, psycholinguistic and developmental perspectives on verbs in Germanic and Semitic languages
Edited by Eva Smolka and Dorit Ravid
[The Mental Lexicon 14:2] 2019
► pp. 319–332

What does a verb? Indicate sentence type

The history of the Germanic sentence type system

| Saarland University

An important task of the verb in German is to indicate sentence type. Depending on where the verb is positioned, the clause is a declarative (verb after the first constituent, which can be any constituent), wh-interrogative (verb after the first constituent, being the wh-phrase), yes/no-interrogative (verb in first position, bearing indicative or subjunctive mood) or imperative clause (verb in first position, bearing imperative mood). This system developed out of a system in which sentence type was indicated by clause-final sentence mood particles, as is usual in older Indo-European (and Semitic) languages. In declarative sentences, the verb-second syntax only came about shortly before the Old High German attestation sets in. We can trace the gradual development of the modern German verb-second syntax with variable prefield from a clear topic-comment structure to a more flexible structure.

Keywords: sentence type, prefield, verb-second, Old High German
Article outline
  • The Germanic sentence type system
  • The origins of the German sentence type system
  • The development of the verbal position in declarative clauses
  • Corpus study on Old High German
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 15 January 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.00009.spe
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