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Article published In: A micro-perspective on Verb Second in Romance and Germanic
Edited by Christine Meklenborg Salvesen
[Linguistic Variation 19:1] 2019
► pp. 16–46

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Redefining the typology of V2 languages

The view from Medieval Romance and beyond

 | University of Oxford
Published online: 24 September 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.15026.wol
Abstract
This article proposes a new typology of the V2 property, integrating new data from a corpus of Medieval Romance texts with data from Rhaeto-Romance, Early Germanic and Modern Germanic. The proposed analysis is that all V2 systems have a V-movement and phrasal movement trigger on the lowest left-peripheral head, Fin, and that in a subclass of V2 languages Force also has these properties. It is argued that the restrictions on and variation in licensing verb-initial and verb-third clauses within Romance and Germanic V2 systems fall out from the Fin/Force distinction.
Article outline
  • 1.Background
    • 1.1Introduction
    • 1.2Working assumptions
    • 1.3Outline
  • 2.On the unifying characteristics of V2 grammars
    • 2.1Finite verb placement
    • 2.2The nature of the prefield
    • 2.3‘Inversion’ phenomena
    • 2.4Summary
  • 3.Variation in V2 grammars
    • 3.1V3* orders
    • 3.2V1 and null constituents
  • 4.Summary and further research
    • 4.1A new typology
    • 4.2Future research
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
References (131)
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2022. Introduction: On the Role of Romance in Cartographic Studies. Probus 34:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Samo, Giuseppe
2022. Criterial V2: ModP as a Locus of Microvariation in Swiss Romansh Varieties. Probus 34:1 ► pp. 143 ff. DOI logo
Wolfe, Sam
2022. Microvariation and Change in the Romance Left Periphery. Probus 34:1 ► pp. 235 ff. DOI logo
Vihman, Virve-Anneli & George Walkden
2021. Verb-second in spoken and written Estonian. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 6:1 DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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