Abstract The paper contributes to the understanding of the variation in finite verb placement in Estonian, a verb-second language, by establishing two descriptive facts. First, it identifies a previously undescribed finite verb position in Estonian declarative main clauses, which will be referred to as ‘clause-medial’. The clause-medial position is located between clause-medial sentence adverbials on the one hand, and VP adverbials and the complements of the verb on the other hand. Secondly, the paper reports two empirical studies providing evidence in support of the hypothesis that the occurrence of a finite verb in the proposed clause-medial position, as opposed to its occurrence in the second position, correlates with its accentuation. While clause-medial verbs tend to bear a nuclear pitch accent, second-position verbs don’t. Finally, the paper briefly discusses some broader implications of the existence of the clause-medial finite verb position and of the interaction between verb placement and prosody.

中文翻译：

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动词放置和强调：韵律是否限制了爱沙尼亚语V2？

摘要本文通过建立两个描述性事实，为理解第二种爱沙尼亚语爱沙尼亚语中有限动词位置的变化做出了贡献。首先，它在爱沙尼亚语说明性主要从句中标识了一个先前未描述的有限动词位置，这被称为“从句中间”。从句中间位置一方面位于从句中间句子副词之间，另一方面位于VP副词和动词的补语之间。其次，本文报告了两项实证研究，为以下假说提供了证据，该假说是：在提议的从句中间位置出现的有限动词与在第二位置出现的有限动词有关。从句中间动词倾向于带有核音高音，而第二位动词则没有。最后，