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Article published In: NOWELE
Vol. 71:1 (2018) ► pp.56–98

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Verb-third in Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch

 | Queen Mary University of London
Published online: 5 April 2018
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https://doi.org/10.1075/nowele.00004.som
Abstract
This article investigates the status of so-called verb-final declaratives in Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch, with a focus on whether clauses in which there is no apparent subordinator and the finite verb occurs later than the expected verb-first or verb-second position can be treated as verb-third (V3) clauses, as they are defined for Old High German in works such as Axel, K. 2007. Studies on Old High German syntax: Left sentence periphery, verb placement and verb second. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar and Tomaselli, A. 1995. Cases of verb-third in Old High German. In A. Battye, I. Roberts (eds.), Clause structure and language change, 345–69. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar. Drawing on a set of 746 clauses, I argue that there is no evidence that the finite verbs in these clauses have undergone verb movement, as is claimed in the aforementioned works, nor are the asyndetic verb-late clauses with a verb in surface third position consistent with the patterns identified in the generative literature for the V3 type.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.A review of literature that deals with the V3 clause type in OHG
  • 3.A clausal typology of Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch
    • 3.1Determining clause type in Otfrid
    • 3.2Clause types and their frequencies
      • 3.2.1V1/V2 and Verb-late clauses – clauses with unambiguous left or right bracket finite verbs
      • 3.2.2Ambiguous clauses
      • 3.2.3Asyndetic verb-late clauses
  • 4.Are there V3 clauses in Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch?
    • 4.1Verb movement in V3 clauses?
    • 4.2Is there a V3 clause type in Otfrid?
      • 4.2.1Claim 1: Violations of verb-second in OHG are V3 and show the order XP-SubjPro-Vfin
      • 4.2.2Claim 2: Pronominal subjects, pronominal objects and light adverbs are most frequently attested in V3(+) clauses, full DP/NP subjects and objects more rarely, PPs not at all
      • 4.2.3Claim 3: Intervening constituents in V3 (and V4(+)?) constructions are discourse-given
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
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