The fundamental left-right asymmetry in the Germanic verb cluster

Cinque (2005, 2009, 2014a) observes that there is an asymmetry in the possible ordering of dependents of a lexical head before versus after the head. A reflection on some of the concepts needed to develop Cinque’s ideas into a theory of neutral word order reveals that dependents need to be treated separately by class. The resulting system is applied to the problem of word order in the Germanic verb cluster. It is shown that there is an extremely close match between theoretically derived expectations for clusters made up of auxiliaries, modals, causative ‘let’, a main verb, and verbal particles. The facts point to the action of Cinque’s fundamental left-right asymmetry in language in the realm of the verb cluster. At the same time, not all verb clusters fall under Cinque’s generalization, which, therefore, argues against treating all cases of restructuring uniformly

On the superficiality of Welsh agreement

A notable feature of Welsh is a number of agreement phenomena, all of which only occur with pronouns. Finite verbs agree with a following pronominal subject, prepositions agree with a following pronominal complement, and a particle which introduces non-finite clauses agrees with a following pronominal subject. Similarly, nouns have a preceding clitic agreeing with a following pronominal possessor, non-finite verbs have a preceding clitic agreeing with a following pronominal object, and what looks like the non-finite form of bod "be", which introduces certain subordinate clauses, has a preceding clitic agreeing with a following pronominal subject. There seems to be a single phenomenon here. Approaches that involve an abstract level face problems and there is no evidence that the phenomenon involves an abstract level. It seems quite plausible to suggest that superficial linear order is crucial, and this idea can be implemented in a straightforward way within linearization-based Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). The properties of agreement also entail that unexpressed noun phrases of various kinds must be represented in the superficial constituent structure and not just at some abstract level, contrary to the view of some frameworks. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media B.V