Resilient grammars: On VO/OV in Germanic linguistic islands in Northern Italy

In this work we consider some residual cases of OV order in Cimbrian and show that this is due to the interaction between verb movement, a language specific property, and the syntax of bare quantifiers. This has consequences on a general theory on the change of the basic word order, since it shows t...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Cecilia Poletto, Günther Grewendorf
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: University of Oslo 2021-01-01
Series:Oslo Studies in Language
Online Access:https://journals.uio.no/osla/article/view/8507
Description
Summary:In this work we consider some residual cases of OV order in Cimbrian and show that this is due to the interaction between verb movement, a language specific property, and the syntax of bare quantifiers. This has consequences on a general theory on the change of the basic word order, since it shows that the passage from OV to VO can involve different structures in different languages depending on other properties, hence it is not possible to trace a common path in the diachronic change for all languages that have undergone this mutation.
ISSN:1890-9639