Abstract
Recent work on verb clusters within Continental West-Germanic has argued in favor of restrictive theories of cluster orders that only generate a subset of the logically possible orders in three-verb clusters, explicitly ruling out the 213 order. In this context it is remarkable that Swiss German features a verb cluster-like construction with an unmarked 213 order. I will argue that this construction indeed represents a proper verb cluster and not an instance of the 3rd Construction, which also allows the 213 order. Based on new diagnostics, viz., stranding of VP3 under topicalization of the governing VP2, short relative clause extraposition and displaced zu, I will show that verb clusters and Verb Projection Raising differ from the 3rd Construction with respect to the structural position of the dependent VP: while the dependent VP is contained within the projection of the governing verb in the former, it occurs outside of the projection of the governing verb in the latter. Applying the diagnostics to the Swiss German 213 construction delivers a clear result: the construction patterns with verb clusters rather than the 3rd Construction. I conclude from this that theories of verb clusters and unmarked word order more generally must be able to generate all six logically possible orders, including the 213 order.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abels, Klaus. 2013. On 2-3-1. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 25: 67–101.
Abels, Klaus. 2016. The fundamental left–right asymmetry in the Germanic verb cluster. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 19 (3): 179–220.
Abels, Klaus, and Ad Neeleman. 2012. Linear asymmetries and the LCA. Syntax 15 (1): 25–74.
Bader, Markus, and Tanja Schmid. 2009. Verb clusters in Colloquial German. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 12 (3): 175–228.
Bader, Thomas. 1995. Missing and misplaced z’ in Bernese Swiss German. In Topics in Swiss German syntax, ed. Zvi Penner, 19–28. Bern: Peter Lang.
Barbiers, Sjef. 2005. Word order variation in three verb clusters and the division of labor between generative linguistics and sociolinguistics. In Syntax and variation. Reconciling the biological and the social, ed. Leonie Cornips, and Karen P. Corrigan, 233–264. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Barbiers, Sjef. 2008. Werkwoordclusters en de grammatica van de rechterperiferie. Nederlandse Taalkunde 13 (2): 160–188.
Barbiers, Sjef, Hans Bennis, and Lotte Dros-Hendriks. 2018. Merging verb cluster variation. Linguistic Variation 18 (1): 144–196.
Barbiers, Sjef, Johan van der Auwera, Hans Bennis, Eefje Boef, Gunther de Vogelaer, and Margreet van der Ham. 2008. Syntactic atlas of the Dutch dialects, vol. 2. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Barss, Andrew. 1986. Chains and anaphoric dependencies. Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
Bayer, Josef, and Jaklin Kornfilt. 1994. Against scrambling as an instance of move-alpha. In Studies on scrambling. Movement and non-movement approaches to free word-order phenomena, ed. Norbert Corver, and Henk van Riemsdijk, 17–60. Berlin: Mouton.
Bayer, Josef, Tanja Schmid, and Markus Bader. 2005. Clause union and clausal position. In The function of function words and functional categories, ed. Marcel den Dikken, and Christina M. Tortora, 79–113. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Bech, Gunnar. 1983. Studien über das deutsche Verbum infinitum. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Biberauer, Theresa. 2013. Germanic verb clusters again—with Afrikaans center stage. Paper presented at the Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop 28, October 3–5, Leipzig.
Biberauer, Theresa, Anders Holmberg, and Ian Roberts. 2014. A syntactic universal and its consequences. Linguistic Inquiry 45 (2): 169–225.
Bobaljik, Jonathan, and Susi Wurmbrand. 2005. The domain of agreement. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 23 (4): 809–865.
Bölsing, Friedrich. 2011. Niederdeutsche Sprachlehre: Plattdeutsch im Kirchspiel Lindhorst, Schaumburg-Lippe. Hildesheim: Olms.
Brandner, Ellen, Martin Salzmann, and Gerhard Schaden. 2016. Zur Syntax und Semantik des doppelten Perfekt aus alemannischer Sicht. In Syntaktische Variation - areallinguistische Perspektiven, ed. Alexandra Lenz, and Franz Patocka, 13–45. Vienna: Vienna University Press.
Broekhuis, Hans. 1993. Verb Projection Raising. Spektator 22: 28–47.
Broekhuis, Hans, Hans den Besten, Kees Hoekstra, and Jean Rutten. 1995. Infinitival complementation in Dutch: On remnant extraposition. The Linguistic Review 12: 93–122.
Cinque, Guglielmo. 2005. Deriving Greenberg’s Universal 20 and its exceptions. Linguistic Inquiry 36 (3): 315–332.
Cinque, Guglielmo. 2006. Restructuring and functional structure. In Restructuring and functional heads: The cartography of syntactic structures, vol. 4, ed. Guglielmo Cinque, 11–63. New York: Oxford University Press.
Cooper, Kathrin E. 1995. Topics in Zurich German syntax. Groningen: Germanistisch Instituut.
Culicover, Peter. 2013. Grammar and complexity: Language at the intersection of competence and performance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
de Vries, Mark. 2002. The syntax of relativization. Utrecht: LOT.
den Besten, Hans, and Hans Broekhuis. 1992. Verb projection raising in het Nederlands. Spektator 21: 21–34.
den Dikken, Marcel. 1994. Minimalist Verb (Projection) Raising. Groninger Arbeiten zur Germanistischen Linguistik 37: 71–88.
den Dikken, Marcel. 1995. Verb (projection) raising, scope, and uniform phrase structure. Proceedings of NELS 25: 95–110.
den Dikken, Marcel. 1996. The minimal links of Verb (Projection) Raising. In Minimal ideas. Syntactic studies in the minimalist framework, ed. Werner Abraham, Samuel David Epstein, Hoskuldur Thrainsson, and C. Jan-Wouter Zwart, 67–96. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Dros-Hendriks, Lotte. 2018. Not another book on verb raising. Utrecht: LOT.
Embick, David, and Rolf Noyer. 2001. Movement operations after syntax. Linguistic Inquiry 32 (4): 555–595.
Evers, Arnold. 1975. The transformational cycle of Dutch and German. Doctoral dissertation, University of Utrecht.
Fanselow, Gisbert. 2001. Features, Q-roles, and free constituent order. Linguistic Inquiry 32 (3): 405–437.
Geilfuß-Wolfgang, Jochen. 1991. Scrambling und Pseudoscrambling. In Verb- und Verbphrasensyntax. Arbeitspapier 11 des Sonderforschungsbereichs 340 Sprachtheoretische Grundlagen für die Computerlinguistik, ed. Jochen Geilfuss-Wolfgang, 19–57. Tübingen: University of Tübingen.
Glaser, Elvira. in preparation. Dialektsyntax des Schweizerdeutschen. Syntaktischer Atlas der Deutschen Schweiz (SADS)
Haeberli, Eric, and Susan Pintzuk. 2012. Revisiting Verb (Projection) Raising in Old English. In Grammatical change, ed. Dianne Jonas, John Whitman, and Andrew Garret, 219–238. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Haegeman, Liliane. 1992. Theory and description in generative syntax. A case study in West Flemish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Haegeman, Liliane. 1998. V-positions and the middle field in West Flemish. Syntax 1 (3): 259–299.
Haegeman, Liliane, and Henk van Riemsdijk. 1986. Verb projection raising, scope, and the typology of rules affecting verbs. Linguistic Inquiry 17 (3): 417–466.
Haider, Hubert. 2003. V-clustering and clause union: Causes and effects. In Verb constructions in German and Dutch, ed. Pieter Seuren, and Gerard Kempen, 91–126. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Haider, Hubert. 2010. The syntax of German. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heilmann, Axel. 1999. Die VP im Schwäbischen. Doctoral dissertation, University of Stuttgart.
Hinrichs, Erhard, and Tsuneko Nakazawa. 1994. Linearizing AUXs in German verbal complexes. In German in head-driven phrase structure grammar, ed. John Nerbonne, Klaus Netter, and Carl Pollard. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Hinterhölzl, Roland. 2006. Scrambling, remnant movement, and restructuring in West Germanic. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
Hinterhölzl, Roland. 2009. The IPP-effect, phrasal affixes and repair strategies in the syntax-morphology interface. Linguistische Berichte 2009 (218): 191–215.
Höhle, Tilman N. 2006. Observing non-finite verbs: Some 3v phenomena in German–Dutch. In Form, structure, and grammar, ed. Patrick Brandt, and Eric Fuß, 55–77. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
Koopman, Hilda, and Anna Szabolcsi. 2000. Verbal complexes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kroch, Anthony, and Beatrice Santorini. 1991. The derived constituent structure of the West-Germanic verb-raising construction. In Principles and parameters in comparative grammar, ed. Robert Freidin, 269–338. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lötscher, Andreas. 1978. Zur Verbstellung im Zürichdeutschen und in anderen Varianten des Deutschen. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 45: 1–29.
Louden, Mark L. 2011. Synchrony and diachrony of verb clusters in Pennsylvania Dutch. In Studies on German-language islands, ed. Michael T. Putnam, 165–185. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Müller, Gereon. 1995. A-bar syntax: A study in movement types. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Müller, Stefan. 2002. Complex predicates: Verbal complexes, resultative constructions and particle verbs in German. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Neeleman, Ad. 1990. The third construction as a classical case of head-movement. Utrecht: Utrecht University.
Reis, Marga, and Wolfgang Sternefeld. 2004. Review article: Susanne Wurmbrand: Infinitives. Restructuring and clause structure. Linguistics: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences 42 (2): 469–508.
Salzmann, Martin. 2011. Resolving the movement paradox in Verb Projection Raising. In Empirical issues in syntax and semantics 8, ed. Olivier Bonami, and Patricia Cabredo Hofherr, 453–485. Paris: CNRS.
Salzmann, Martin. 2013. New arguments for verb cluster formation at PF and a right-branching VP. Evidence from verb doubling and cluster penetrability. Linguistic Variation 13 (1): 81–132.
Salzmann, Martin. 2019. Displaced morphology in German verb clusters. An argument for post-syntactic morphology. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 22(1):1–53. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-019-09103-y.
Sapp, Christopher D. 2011. The verbal complex in subordinate clauses from medieval to modern German. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Sauerland, Uli, and Paul Elbourne. 2002. Total reconstruction, PF movement, and derivational order. Linguistic Inquiry 33 (2): 283–319.
Schallert, Oliver. 2012. Untersuchungen zu Ersatzinfinitivkonstruktionen in den Vorarlberger und Liechtensteiner Dialekten. Doctoral dissertation, University of Marburg.
Schallert, Oliver. 2014. Zur Syntax der Ersatzinfinitivkonstruktion: Typologie und Variation. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.
Schmid, Tanja. 2005. Infinitival syntax. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Schmid, Tanja, and Ralf Vogel. 2004. Dialectal variation in German 3-verb clusters: A surface-oriented optimality theoretic account. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 7 (3): 235–274.
Schwalm, Johanna. 2013. Verbalsyntax in den Mundarten Hessens: eine Untersuchung anhand der SyHD-Materialien. Master’s thesis, Marburg University.
Seiler, Guido. 2004. On three types of dialect variation and their implications for linguistic theory: Evidence from verb clusters in Swiss German dialects. In Dialectology meets typology, ed. Bernd Kortmann, 367–399. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Sternefeld, Wolfgang. 2006. Syntax: eine morphologisch motivierte generative Beschreibung des Deutschen. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag.
ter Beek, Janneke. 2008. Restructuring and infinitival complements in Dutch. Utrecht: LOT.
Vanden Wyngaerd, Guido. 1989. Verb Projection Raising and the status of infinitival complements. In Sentential complementation and the lexicon. Studies in honour of Wim de Geest, ed. Dany Jaspers, Yvan Putseys, Wim Klooster, and Pieter Seuren, 423–438. Dordrecht: Foris. Linguistic models.
Vogel, Ralf. 2009. Skandal im Verbkomplex. Betrachtungen zur scheinbar inkorrekten Morphologie in infiniten Verbkomplexen des Deutschen. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 28 (2): 307–346.
Weber, Albert. 1987. Zürichdeutsche Grammatik: ein Wegweiser zur guten Mundart. Zürich: Schweizer Spiegel Verlag.
Wild, Katharina. 1991. Zur Satzgliedstellung in den “Fuldaer” deutschen Dialekten Südungarns. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 58: 24–43.
Wöllstein-Leisten, Angelika. 2001. Die Syntax der dritten Konstruktion: eine repräsentationelle Analyse zur Monosententialität von “zu”-Infinitiven im Deutschen. Tübingen: Stauffenburg-Verlag.
Wurmbrand, Susi. 2001. Infinitives: Restructuring and clause structure. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Wurmbrand, Susi. 2004a. Syntactic vs. post-syntactic movement. In Proceedings of the 2003 annual conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association, eds. Sophie Burelle and Stanca Somesfalean, 284–295. Montreal: Université du Québec à Montréal.
Wurmbrand, Susi. 2004b. Two types of restructuring-lexical vs. functional. Lingua 114 (8): 991–1014.
Wurmbrand, Susi. 2004c. West Germanic verb clusters: The empirical domain. In Verb clusters: A study of Hungarian, German, and Dutch, ed. Katalin É Kiss, and Henk van Riemsdijk, 43–85. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Wurmbrand, Susi. 2007. How complex are complex predicates? Syntax 10 (3): 243–288.
Wurmbrand, Susi. 2017. Verb clusters, verb raising, and restructuring. In The Blackwell companion to syntax, 2nd ed, ed. Martin Everaert, and Henk van Riemsdijk. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Zwart, Jan-Wouter. 1993. Dutch syntax. A minimalist approach. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Groningen.
Zwart, Jan-Wouter. 1995. A note on verb clusters in the Stellingwerf dialect. In Linguistics in the Netherlands 1995, ed. Marcel den Dikken, and Kees Hengeveld, 215–226. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Zwart, Jan-Wouter. 1996. Verb clusters in continental West Germanic dialects. In Microparametric syntax and dialect variation, ed. James R. Black, and Virginia Motapanyane, 229–258. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Zwart, Jan-Wouter. 2007. Some notes on the origin and distribution of the IPP-effect. Groninger Arbeiten zur Germanistischen Linguistik 45: 77–99.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Salzmann, M. On the limits of variation in Continental West-Germanic verb clusters: evidence from VP-stranding, extraposition and displaced morphology for the existence of clusters with 213 order. J Comp German Linguistics 22, 55–108 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-019-09104-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-019-09104-x