Rivero (2000)

De Arbres
  • Rivero, Marı́a Luisa. 2000. 'Finiteness and Second Position in Long Verb Movement Languages: Breton and Slavic.', R. Borsley (éd.), The Nature and Function of Syntactic Categories, Syntax and Semantics 32, Academic Press, N.Y., 295-323.


 Introduction:
 
 "In this chapter, I argue that Long Verb Movement (LVM) languages are characterized by (a) a PF interface condition on Tense (T) that mentions a Head-Complement configuration, and (b) a LVM process that fronts a nonfinite verb, and applies in PF to satisfy this condition. This has two typological consequences. The first is that unrelated languages such as Breton and Bulgarian share identical second-position effects for tensed Auxiliaries (Aux), and LVM constructions with an untensed V preceding the tensed Aux. The second is that LVM and Verb Second (V2) languages can both be said to exhibit second-position effects in main clauses, but nevertheless differ. The received view is that V2 involves two fronting operations that are syntactic and hence check features. I propose that LVM is a hierarchical fronting process of the PF branch that satisfies an interface condition on T (or a stylistic rule), and not a checking or syntactic operation."


 note 1:
 "The first version of this paper dates from 1993; this updated version owes much to helpful comments by. R. D. Borsley, P. Hirschbühler, M. Suñer, A. Terzi and two anonymous reviewers fro the present volume. Unless otherwhise indicated, Breton examples are from Borsley, Rivero & Stephens (1996). […]"