OV/VO variation and information structure in Old Saxon and Middle Low German

This paper discusses the syntactic status of OV/VO variation in Old Saxon and Middle Low German, a relatively understudied member of the West-Germanic language family. A comprehensive corpus study on Old Saxon and novel Middle Low German material shows that OV/VO variation is to a large extent governed by information structure and grammatical weight. The results indicate that Low German patterns with Dutch and German: given objects are predominantly preverbal, while new objects freely surface in postverbal position. While these observations might at first glance invite an analysis in terms of extraposition from an OV base, this paper argues specifically against this. Instead, it is argued that an antisymmetric analysis in which OV word order is derived from a VO base provides a better framework to account for the effect of information structure and weight on OV/VO variation

Word order change, architecture and interfaces: Evidence from the development of V to C movement in the history of English

We present a novel analysis of the development of one type of Verb Second (V2) word order over the Middle English period and its loss over the early Modern English period. The analysis is based on a fine-grained and novel corpus study, which shows that multiple factors play a role in this development, and that it involves interaction between syntax, information structure/pragmatics and prosody. We focus on subject-finite inversion of pronominal subjects, following an adverb (þa, þonne in Old English, extending to other adverbs over the Middle English periods), isolating those contexts for which it is generally accepted that they involve finite verb movement to the highest functional head in the C-domain (ForceP) of the main clause. Middle English first sees the extension of this type of V2 to inversion following other short originally English adverbs that are discourse-linking: here, there, yet and thus. This extension primarily involves short finite verbs such as auxiliaries and monosyllabic lexical verbs. V2 following adverbs is lost over the early Modern period. We present novel data and arguments to show that this loss largely coincides with the grammaticalization of modals and other auxiliaries, and that it is triggered by metrical changes in the definition of the English prosodic word: as long as the mostly unstressed adverb could co-occur with a stressed monosyllabic finite verb and the postverbal subject pronoun could be integrated into the prosodic word of the auxiliary, inversion was fine. Primary stress on the auxiliary was lost in the final stages of the auxiliation process, yielding an unheaded foot, violating prosodic requirements. In contrast, this type of V2 could be maintained in questions and focal initial negatives such as Never would I do such a thing! because the initial constituent carries primary stress in these contexts, heading the metrical foot

Information structure and OV word order in Old and Middle English: a phase-based approach

This article re-examines the evidence for OV and VO variation and the loss of OV order in historical English, and presents a novel and unified analysis of Old and Middle English word order based on a uniform VO grammar, with leftward scrambling of specific types of objects. This analysis provides an insightful framework for a precise analysis of how OV word orders differ from VO word orders. We show in detail that OV with referential objects involves discourse-given objects. We then present a phase-based analysis from a VO base in which objects undergo feature-driven movement to spec,vP triggered by the information structure of the object. We propose that this analysis also yields a syntactic framework for analysing the derivation of preverbal quantified and negated objects, as well as a natural explanation for the stepwise loss of OV word order

When information structure exploits syntax: The relation between the loss of VO and scrambling in Dutch

This paper addresses the relation between two types of word order variation in two stages of Dutch: OV/VO variation in historical Dutch and scrambling in present-day Dutch. Information structural considerations influence both types of word order variation, and we demonstrate by means of a comprehensive corpus study that they have a comparable pattern: given objects tend to appear earlier in the sentence than new objects. We infer from this that the two types of word order variation are diachronically related. Our findings support an analysis of scrambling as object movement from a uniformly head-initial base via the specifier of VP to the specifier of vP. We argue that historical Dutch allows spell out of the object in its postverbal base position, but that this possibility was eventually lost. Consequently, the boundary between the given and new domains shifts from the verb to the adverbial

Information structure triggers for word order variation and change: the OV/VO alternation in the West-Germanic languages

The West-Germanic language family is characterized by a remarkable variation in word order. The continental varieties, including Dutch and German, have largely Object-Verb (OV) word order, whereas English has strict Verb-Object (VO) word order. It is intriguing that such closely related languages show such a fundamental word order distinction, the more so when considering that the older stages of the languages show varying mixtures of OV and VO word order. This variation raises many questions regarding its motivation and its syntactic status, both from a synchronic and diachronic perspective. This thesis approaches OV/VO variation from a comparative and diachronic perspective, building on the hypothesis that OV/VO variation is motivated by information structure. By means of a series of detailed corpus studies on the earlier stages of English, Dutch, Low German and High German it shows that - while the variation in earlier English, Dutch, and German is structurally similar - the way that information structure governs the OV/VO alternation in the earliest attested language stages already signals the difference between English as a VO language, and Dutch and German as an OV language; in early English VO is the pragmatically neutral word order, whereas in early Dutch and German OV is pragmatically neutral. These findings feed into a novel antisymmetric analysis, in which the variation is derived in the same way for all West-Germanic languages, but which is flexible enough to allow for variation between the individual languages

Word order change, architecture, and interfaces: Evidence from the development of V to C movement in the history of English

We present a novel account of the development and loss of one type of V2 word order over the Middle and early Modern English periods, based on a fine-grained corpus study which shows that multiple factors are at play, in interaction between syntax, information structure and prosody. We focus on finite verb movement to the highest functional head in the C-domain (Force) of the main clause: subject-finite inversion with pronominal subjects following an initial adverb (þa, þonne) in Old English. Middle English first sees the extension of this V2-context to other initial short deictic adverbs: here, there, nu, yet and thus. The choice of verb is narrowed down to auxiliaries and monosyllabic lexical verbs. V2 following adverbs is subsequently lost over the early Modern period. We show that this loss coincides with the grammaticalization of modals and other auxiliaries, leading to the loss of primary stress on the auxiliary. This triggered metrical changes in the clause-initial prosodic word: as long as the unstressed initial adverb could co-occur with a stressed monosyllabic finite verb, and the post-verbal subject pronoun could be integrated into the prosodic word of the auxiliary, inversion flourished. The loss of primary stress on the auxiliary yielded an unheaded foot, violating prosodic requirements. Our multifactorial treatment of the development and loss of V2 implies that the process we find is best treated in terms of micro-variation