Cross Germanic variation in the realm of support verbs

Platzack, Christer

doi:10.1075/la.191.10pla

In:Comparative Germanic Syntax: The state of the art
Edited by Peter Ackema, Rhona Alcorn, Caroline Heycock, Dany Jaspers, Jeroen van Craenenbroeck and Guido Vanden Wyngaerd
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 191] 2012
► pp. 279–310

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Cross Germanic variation in the realm of support verbs

Christer Platzack | Lund University

Published online: 28 August 2012

https://doi.org/10.1075/la.191.10pla

This paper investigates the cross Germanic variation found in the use of support verbs in connection with VP Topicalization, VP Ellipsis and VP Pronominalization. The differences between Swedish and English are highlighted, but Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic and German are also considered. In this analysis, the support verb is a spelled-out little v, and the topicalized, elided and pronominalized parts are √(root)Ps. The variation between English and Swedish is an effect of where the support verb is first merged: English do in little v, Swedish göra in the head of the complement of little v. The other investigated languages have support verbs of the Swedish type, but Danish and Norwegian have developed a support verb of the English type as well.

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